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00:06 Ligia Popescu: Hello, and welcome to the Online Family Nurse Practitioner Clinicals And Residency Deep Dive Webinar, presented by the Carson-Newman Department of Nursing. Thank you for taking the time out of your day today to join us. My name is Ligia Popescu, and I'll be your host today. Before we begin, please refresh your browser and turn up the volume on your computer or device to hear the audio. If you have any technical difficulties or questions for us today, please type them in the Q&A box and hit Send. I'll be collecting all the questions and we'll be addressing them at the end of the presentation. Please use the media play to control the volume or pause the presentation if you are viewing it on demand. And a copy of the slide presentation will be made available to all the participants within a couple days.

00:57 Ligia Popescu: Now here is what we'll be covering during today's session. So, with us today is Dr. Kimberly Bolton, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director at the Department of Nursing at Carson-Newman. She's going to give us an overview of Carson-Newman and get into some of the details about the clinical and residency requirements. Student Success Advisor, Amy Skelton will then follow with an overview of the supported online experience, just to give you an idea of what you can expect as an online nursing student at Carson-Newman. And finally, we've got Senior Enrollment Advisor Riley Sellers, who is going to go over the Carson-Newman program requirements and some important dates and deadlines to keep in mind. And like I said, we will end with a Q&A session so please, go ahead and type those questions into the Q&A box. And now, let's begin.

01:55 Ligia Popescu: Dr. Bolton is an experienced nurse practitioner and nurse educator and has been teaching at Carson-Newman since 1997. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, Dr. Bolton. Can you share a little bit about your background with our audience today?

02:11 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Oh, okay. Number one, I'm honored to be here, so thank you for asking me. My background is women's health, so I am a women's healthcare nurse practitioner and I have been practicing since 1991, so 30 years, I guess. I've been teaching at Carson-Newman since 1997, and it's a great place to work and I really enjoy the teaching aspect, but I like to take care of patients too, so therefore, we do both at Carson-Newman. All your nurse practitioner faculty will, they practice, and they teach so we keep our hand in and keep up to date that way. But I live in Knoxville Tennessee, so about a 45-minute drive probably, to campus. We have both and an online and an on-campus program, so I have to go up to campus. It's a beautiful drive though. And I'm married, been married 30 years, and have one 27-year-old son, just turned 27 yesterday.

03:14 Ligia Popescu: Wonderful, thank you. These are today's presenters, Ligia Popescu, that's me, your host. Amy Skelton, your Student Success Advisor and presenter today, and then Riley Sellers is our Enrollment Advisor. Okay, so now I'd like to turn it back over to Dr. Bolton to give you a quick overview of Carson-Newman. Take it away.

03:37 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Okay, the graduate nursing program started in 1997 at Carson-Newman, but there was a BSN program prior to that, probably started, I don't know, '85, '86. The online program started last fall and it seems to be going well. We are accredited with CP&E and accreditation is due probably in about three years. Overall, the university ranks really well, we're usually always in US News as best. Usually what it means is we are the best value for your money. We do have the ROTC students on campus and then of course we take any kind of military student, so we are as the slide says, military friendly. And for the online program we do, I think, three enrollments per year.

04:36 Ligia Popescu: Okay, thank you. So, for our next slide, I'm going to poll the audience. I would love to hear from the audience which program you're most interested in learning about. You could just go ahead and make your selection, in a couple seconds we'll look at the results.

05:05 Ligia Popescu: Okay, looks like so far, it's mostly MSN-FNP. Okay, moving on to the curriculum. So, Dr. Kim, before we get into the curriculum details, I just want to give the audience an overview of all the online nursing programs. So, there's an online Bachelor of Science in Nursing and there's an online... So, there's an RN to MSN-FNP, which anybody that has an associate degree in nursing, or a diploma would potentially qualify for. And then the master’s program, you need a bachelor's in nursing. And then the post Master's, you would need a master’s degree. So, Dr. Kim, can you give us an overview of the MSN-FNP curriculum? What's the breakdown?

05:56 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Oh, okay. You have the core courses, so the courses that are the building blocks or the foundations for the entire program. There's Advanced Pathophysiology, Advanced Pharmacology, and Health Assessment. So those courses are going to follow you all the way through the entire program because you use all of those in each of your clinical courses. Then you will take some periphery courses like Nursing Statistics which is helpful in research and Nursing Theory, which is, it's helpful because it gives you a way of looking at the patient and learning how to take care of a patient through a particular viewpoint or ideology, if you want to say. We also have a course, the three big clinical courses which would be Women's Health, Pediatrics, and Adult Health, and in those, you learn how to take care of that particular population.

07:00 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Women's Health is a pretty contained environment. So not that the course is easy, but the material is contained so we consider that to be... That's why it's the first clinical course that you take. And the next course that you take, of course, is Pediatrics. And it's about children, but a lot of the acute... And mostly, it's acute disorders because that's mostly what children come in to practice for or primary care for. And then the last one is Adult Health. And in Adult Health, you're going to take care of patients who have chronic illnesses like diabetes, COPD, high blood pressure, but could also be coming in to see you because on top of those, they've got an acute infection, like sinusitis, bronchitis, and so you get both acute and chronic in that class.

07:46 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: You get the opportunity to decide what kind of research... You have to a research class, of course, because as a master’s level nurse, you should be participating in research to help better both your patient care and nursing as a whole. And then you get to choose if you want to do a thesis or if you want to just work on doing an article to send it to publication. And then finally you take a class that we call Accountability, and in that class basically what you're doing is you're learning about the role of a nurse practitioner, you're learning some legalities that go with it. You're also going to be learning some theories, like change theory, how to change people's minds, how to work within the system to get the kind of changes that you need for both your practice and to take care of your patients. So, it's an interesting class.

08:36 Ligia Popescu: Great. Do you want to go to the post Master's program next?

08:44 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Okay. In the post Master's program, you're going to take courses that you did not have in your regular Master's program. So, if you come to me and you have like a Nurse Educator Master's, then most likely, you're going to take the most amount of courses, which is probably all seven of them. And then you're going to start out in Pathophysiology and Pharmacology then move into Advanced Health Assessment and then move into the big three clinical courses, which are the same, Women's Health, Pediatrics and then Adult Health. And then you're going to take Accountability. If you are already a nurse practitioner, then most likely you have had Advanced Pathophysiology and Advanced Pharmacology, but you will have to repeat Health Assessment. So, your first course will be Health Assessment and then if you're a women's health nurse practitioner then you just take Pediatrics and Adult. If you're a pediatric nurse practitioner, you just take Women's Health and Adult, so less classes if you're already a nurse practitioner.

09:56 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Got it, great. Thank you. So, let's go over the RN to MSN-FNP program.

10:04 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: In the RN to MSN program, you're going to complete the courses in the RN to BSN program. And so, at the end of that completion you will be granted the BSN from the university. Oh, and then after that, you start right into the MSN core, which is Advanced Pathophysiology and Pharmacology. Now, you have to have a 3.0 to start taking your master’s classes, but that appears to be doable. Most of the RN to BSN students, by the time they get to the end, they're at a 3.0 or higher.

10:42 Ligia Popescu: Great. Okay, so thanks, Dr. Bolton. Now before we start talking about the clinical aspect, I'm going to take a moment and ask the audience to vote. Have you put off earning your FNP licensure because the idea of finding clinical sites and preceptors is too stressful? Just trying to get an audience poll. Please vote now. Okay. I'm not sure why that poll is not working but moving onto the next slide. Let's go over the... Can you give us an overview of the clinicals aspect at Carson-Newman?

11:31 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Sure. You have clinical hours in four different courses. Advanced Health Assessment, you have 60 clinical hours there. They're done a variety of ways. You have a preceptor that you will do some clinical with. You will have a video that you have to do once a week of an hour of you practicing the weekly skills. And then there is a staff meeting with whoever is teaching the course and that's about an hour. And so that's how you get your clinical courses for that, I mean clinical hours for that. And then in both Women's Health and Pediatrics, you're with a preceptor in women's health or in pediatrics or in a primary care office that sees women and children. And so that is about 180 hours of clinicals, 180 clock hours. In your Adult Health, you're in a primary care practice, which is where most of you will end up working, and you do 240 clock hours of clinical there. If you decide to do the advanced practice project, then that's another 30 clinical hours in an area that relates to your article that you're going to write. So, if you're doing the advanced practice project then you're doing a total of about 690 clock hours. If you decide to do a thesis, then you're just doing 660 clock hours.

12:56 Ligia Popescu: Thank you. So, let's talk about clinical placement. Can you give us an idea of what clinical placement's all about?

13:09 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Clinical placement is to help you find the preceptors in the area closest to where you live. You could be... We try to put you as close as we can, but... So, when you first join the program, I believe there's some paperwork that you fill out so that the placement team can start hunting for you, a place to do your clinical just as soon you get enrolled in the program. You are responsible for finding your placement for health assessment yourself but the remainder of the courses, Women's Health, Adult Health, and Pediatrics, we find for you.

13:48 Ligia Popescu: On your screen right now, you'll see all the courses that are highlighted in green we do offer clinical placements for. The courses in orange, those are additional clinical courses that require clinical hours but may not be mandatory depending on if you are taking the project or the thesis. Okay. So how does the clinical placement process work?

14:26 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: There is an intake form that I believe is emailed to the student after they are admitted into the program, they fill it out and then there is a clinical placement team that will work to find a clinical placement as close to where they're living as possible. I think we had decided that we don't somebody to drive more than 60 miles, but it could be just a little over that. And so, once they fill out the intake form, I think the clinical placement specialist is in contact with them and tries to help them find a placement. And so, they're working really hard and they've got some really, so far, they've got really good placements. When they find the placement, they email me and let me know if it's a good place for a student to go, and I either approve it or I don't approve it. So far, every place they've found looks great and I think that students will have good placements there. So then once we get the site approved, then we send the preceptor an agreement, so that they'll know when you're coming, and they'll be ready for you when you come.

15:42 Ligia Popescu: Okay. So, can you clarify what are the clearance requirements?

15:48 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: I'm sorry, can I clarify what?

15:50 Ligia Popescu: The clearance requirements, that thing that students need to take care of before they start clinicals.

15:57 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Yes. Once students are in the program, they have to do a background check first and when they are getting ready to get into the clinical class, the first clinical class, you have to do a drug screen, pass a drug screen, then you have to upload several documents. You have to upload your nursing license, CPR, you have to upload immunization records, like for chicken pox and MMR, and TB skin test. If where you live doesn't do the skin test, we do accept the blood test. You also have to show us that you've got medical insurance and you're covered by medical insurance. And there might be... I think that's it.

16:44 Ligia Popescu: Okay, okay. So, what can students expect when they show up for clinicals on the first day?

16:53 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Well, usually on the first day, most of the preceptors are going to orient you to where you're working. They're going to introduce you to staff, they're going to explain to you how the day goes, how they work within this practice, and maybe for the first day, maybe for the first two days, they're going to probably just be observing the nurse practitioner and watching how she interacts with her own patients. And then after that... And if there's any, like if they are doing computer charting, she probably will show you the computer charting. Not all places where we send students... They don't let students maybe do the computer charting everywhere that you go, but those places that do, they will have an orientation for you, so that you are aware of how to use that computer charting system.

17:42 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: The preceptor evaluates you on a daily basis, but you will have, a faculty person from Carson-Newman will either come visit in person if you're close enough to us to make a trip to or we'll call on the phone twice during the semester. So, you are evaluated by a faculty person twice during the semester, one at midterm, so when you've gotten close to 100 hours in and then again right before your last day when you've gotten almost all either 180 or 240 hours in.

18:18 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: There are responsibilities for you the student in how you should behave, there are responsibilities for me or any other faculty person from Carson-Newman, and there is a list of responsibilities that the preceptor needs to follow, and all of those are found in the handbook at Carson-Newman. Basically, your main responsibility with clinical is that you go, be there on time, and that you work well with the preceptor and that you're learning something. Should you be someplace, and you don't feel like you're learning what you need to, then you need to contact the faculty and we try to see what we can do about that.

19:04 Ligia Popescu: Well, that's very great. Thank you. So, let's talk about the residency experience. Can you tell us about that?

19:12 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Sure. The residency is designed, number one, so you can meet some of your faculty, but mainly it's designed so that we can make sure that your health assessment skills, your interviewing skills at the primary care level, your health assessment skills at the primary care level are where they're supposed to be. So, you come to campus, it's a three-day residency. It depends on when you take health assessment as to when your residency will be, but you come, we do a lecture that you practice your skills. We demonstrate how to do some of the skills correctly. And we give you time to practice, and we correct your skill if you're doing it wrong. So, you have to come to campus, which is in Jefferson City, but it's a very nice and beautiful place, and the last residency that we had in the summer, it was great, and we had a really good time with all the students.

20:17 Ligia Popescu: Thank you. Okay, so let's talk about what takes place at the residency. What can students expect when they get there?

20:32 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: The students should expect that it starts at 9:00 on Thursday and we have a little lecture about genitalia, male/female genitalia, the prostate, pregnant women, things that we are not going to have you demonstrating on the videos or anything, so these are all things that are done with mannequins. So, you have a little lecture, we have an introduction, get to know each other, then you're going to practice assessing models for, like testicular models, pelvic models, pregnant models, and that's all on the first day. On the second day, we're going to... We have a list of skills that we've been watching you do on your videos and if there are any that everybody is consistently not getting correct, we show you how to correct that skill.

21:25 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: We divide you into partners and then we have you practice. So, you are practicing how to put the whole head to toe physical together. And so, you practice all the rest of the day and then usually the third day is your opportunity to demonstrate your skills back to us. So, we have, we pair you, again, we pair you with a partner and for the first hour you're either the patient or the partner. So, you're going to do a head to toe physical on your partner that we pair you with while the faculty is watching. So that's why we give you the whole day before to practice and to get your skills lined up.

22:05 Ligia Popescu: And typically, this takes place you said, over a Thursday, Friday, Saturday?

22:11 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Yes, on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

22:15 Ligia Popescu: Okay. So now I'm going to turn it over to our Student Success Advisor, Amy Skelton, to talk us a little bit about what other types of support students can expect during their tenure as a student.

22:31 Amy Skelton: Thank you. In the online program, students get a lot of support from their professors and the faculty in the Carson-Newman community. They will be interacting with the professors and the other students throughout their courses. This is going to allow them to build on their network. They're also going to get to interact and meet the other students during the three-day residency that Dr. Bolton was talking about. Students are going to have a student success advisor, who's going to advise them on their degree. They'll be working with a student from the initial intake into the program all the way through graduation. The student success advisor is the student's main point of contact and they should think of them as a liaison to all the other departments. Truly, what I'm here to do is make the transition into online as easy as possible for the students, and this is going to support them in their classes.

23:24 Amy Skelton: During the first call or the webinar with the new students, the advisor is going to discuss the student's courses, go over the program's curriculum, then they'll be assisting them with getting registered for their first courses through C-N Connect. During the first week of classes the students can expect their advisor to contact them and make sure that they're comfortable navigating their online courses through the Edvance360 system. Students should expect to be in continuous contact with their success advisor as they're going to be an essential part of their support team through their educational journey with Carson-Newman. Monitoring their academic progress, assisting them with registration, and anything else that comes up. Additionally, students are going to have access to several different resources. They're going to have access to Hoonuit which has an abundant amount of videos on research papers using Microsoft Word. Also, they're going to get access to Smart Thinking, which is online tutoring. And they have access to the Writing Center, that's going to help them with their writing skills and using ATA.

24:32 Ligia Popescu: Wonderful, that's a lot of support. Now I'm going to turn it over to Riley Sellers to talk to us a little bit about the requirements for enrollment. So, let's just start, for example, what are the admissions requirement for the MSN-FNP?

24:47 Riley Sellers: So, for the MSN-FNP, you need to have your BSN from a regionally-accredited university, but they must also be either NLN-accredited or CCNE-accredited as well. You must have at least a 3.0 GPA, if you do not have 3.0 GPA you would need to take the GRE and score at least a 290. You will need two letters of recommendation. If you have graduated your bachelor's within the last three years, you will need an academic letter as well. The other two letters are an employment and a character, and then you're going to need to write your goal statement, which we do email you some questions to answer for that. And then we'll need official transcripts from all previously-attended universities.

25:35 Ligia Popescu: Awesome. So, what is the... What does the tuition breakdown look like?

25:38 Riley Sellers: The cost per credit hour is $650 per credit hour. There is a total of 45 credit hours throughout the program so the total tuition is $29,250. We do have very minimal additional fees. Our only additional fees are a $25 per credit hour technology fee, and then there is a $40 per clinical medical malpractice insurance fee.

26:04 Ligia Popescu: Okay. Is there an application fee or a transcript evaluation fee?

26:06 Riley Sellers: No, we would be happy to do an evaluation ahead of time, a tentative evaluation, but those are always subject to change as when Dr. Bolton reviews each file personally, she does do that as well.

26:20 Ligia Popescu: Great. So, I, as your host today, would recommend if you want to talk to Riley and learn more about these, financial aid availability and other details of the program, please schedule an appointment at that website listed below, the [26:35] ____.com link. And then, Riley, can you talk to us a little bit about what dates and deadlines to keep in mind if you are a student who's interested in enrolling?

26:45 Riley Sellers: Definitely. We are currently accepting applications for our October RN to BSN program and our RN to MSN program, those classes do start on October 21st. The deadline to get documents in and finish your application is going to be October 5th. And as a reminder for the RN to BSN program, the only thing you need to do is your application and official transcripts. For the master’s program, the MSN-FNP and the post Master's FNP certificate program, those classes will be starting on January 13th and the deadline to complete your file and have all documents in to me is going to be December 5th.

27:25 Ligia Popescu: Okay. In general, can you tell me how long does it take to really complete your application, the whole file?

27:31 Riley Sellers: It shouldn't take more than two weeks, that's our expectations for our student, is from the day they talk to us, we'd like to see that they get their application and all their documents in within two weeks.

27:41 Ligia Popescu: So, for those of you out there who are interested in the January term, don't wait until way past mid-November probably. You want to get started on submitting your application so we can get moving, considering the holidays and everything, sometimes the campuses close down, so you don't want to be late with transcripts. Okay, so now we've reached the Q&A portion of our webinar presentation today. So, I have one question here from Joyce, she said that she heard the faculty will review videotapes of the students performing physical exams in the health assessment course. How does this occur and are they actual patients? Dr. Bolton, can you take that question?

28:33 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: No, they shouldn't be patients. They should be somebody in your family that you could practice on, it just needs to be an adult, so they need to be 18, at least 18. Most of my students use family members, husbands, sons, daughters, next door... Some of them use next door neighbors. You have to tape it and then you upload it. Currently, right now, the students are uploading it to Microsoft Stream, but we're getting ready to change learning systems. And when we change learning systems, I think we'll just be able to upload it right into that learning system. You upload it every week for the first eight weeks of class, the faculty that's assigned to you, they review it and they give you feedback on your skills. So, the purpose is twofold: One, so that we can really say that you are practicing these skills every week, so you have to do it for an hour. And two, so that we can correct your skills and correct your technique.

29:38 Ligia Popescu: Okay, another question that we have in from the audience, how often do students get, take an employment position where they do their clinical?

29:56 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Usually, by the time students graduate and I can... We don't have any online students that have graduated yet so the students that I'm speaking about are the students that have been on the ground program. Usually I would say at least five students already have a place to work by the time they're getting ready to graduate. They may even have a place before graduation. Usually about four students maybe, maybe as many as six, are sometimes hired where they spent their last semester doing clinical.

30:35 Ligia Popescu: Okay. One more question here. Will students be examined on suturing during the residency?

30:44 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: We, for the on-ground students, we do teach suturing and we're looking at a way to provide that for the online students. And by the time that they take that class, it will be a reality, but it would just be for them to practice, we don't really grade them on suturing.

31:04 Ligia Popescu: Okay, gotcha. This is a question for Riley. How have former... Or sorry. How have former, well former students handled working full-time while in the program?

31:16 Riley Sellers: Well, that's the nice thing about this program is it is part-time only, so the class work is really set up to... With that full-time working nurse in mind. When it comes to clinicals, each student's going to schedule their clinicals differently based on their work schedule and that's one thing I can't stress enough when it comes to clinical placement, if you do need weekend or evening hours for your clinicals, please make sure you put down as many doctor's offices that you know of that have those types of hours as we cannot guarantee those type, those hours for you, but the more options you give us, the better. But it's really breaking it down into your schedule. We do average about 13 to 14 hours a week expected to study and do coursework.

32:10 Ligia Popescu: So, we have another question from the audience. Just can you repeat the credit hour, the cost per credit hour and tuition cost for the MSN one more time?

32:17 Riley Sellers: Sure, it's 650 per credit hour and the total tuition is $29,250. There are two additional fees. There is a $25 per credit hour technology fee and the $40 per clinical medical malpractice insurance fee.

32:35 Ligia Popescu: Okay. Another question here from the audience from Trevor. What is the expected turnaround time when reaching out to the faculty? How long are they expected to wait for a response?

32:50 Riley Sellers: Amy?

32:51 Amy Skelton: So, students should be a getting responses from the faculty within 24 to 48 hours of sending an email. Obviously, sometimes there's weekends and holidays and things involved, that's why we're saying a 24 to 48-hour turnaround is the expectation.

33:08 Ligia Popescu: Here's a question for Dr. Bolton. What support do you provide for helping students prepare for boards?

33:20 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: What... Was the question, what help do we give to get the students ready to take certification?

33:29 Ligia Popescu: Yeah, how do you help them prepare to take the boards?

33:32 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Okay. I get sent emails all the time from different places that will do conferences to help you be successful with the boards and so I usually always forward those emails to the students. Half of our students will take a refresher course when they graduate and the other half will not take a refresher course, every student is different. Our courses throughout the whole entire program are set up so that you get the material and you get the knowledge you need in order to pass the boards. If you're successful and you pass the classes, then you are really in line to be able to pass certification. But I do also forward you all the information any time that I get something about a conference or something that helps you to pass the boards. Plus, in your last semester, we do require you to buy a Fitzpatrick certification exam review book, and in there, there are multiple practice questions for you to use, to get ready for certification exams.

34:46 Ligia Popescu: Now from what I understand, Carson-Newman has a pretty good reputation with their students passing NCLEX and their boards and stuff like that, is that correct?

34:57 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Yes, ma'am.

35:00 Ligia Popescu: Okay.

35:00 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: The class that just graduated, we had I think, 14 sit for certification and all 14 have now passed, but first time through,13 out of 14 passed, so our rate runs about 92% to 100% pass rate.

35:23 Ligia Popescu: Excellent. I've got one question that came in from two people. Can you do clinicals at your workplace?

35:32 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: It depends on where you worked. If you work at a hospital, then the answer to that is no. If you work for a system of various clinics, like we do have one student, she works for the VA but she works in a cardiovascular clinic, but there's also a primary care clinic and a women's health clinic so she will be able to do clinicals where she works, within the system where she works, but not in the office in which she works.

36:00 Ligia Popescu: Okay, got it. I've got a question here from Taryn, she's very interested in being a rural provider and being from Texas, rural Texas is very vast. Would you be fine with opening placements in such a vast area?

36:19 Dr. Kimberly Bolton: Well, it might be a little bit more difficult, but we will give it all that we can to make sure that we can find her a placement. Sometimes rural areas are easier because there's not that many students vying for clinical placements and so it's just a lot easier to get a student in a particular site. But sometimes rural areas are not easy because the physicians or the practitioners that are already there are not used to having students. But I can assure her that everybody will work very hard to try to find her a placement.

36:56 Ligia Popescu: Okay, great. Okay, well, I think that's all the questions that we have for today. I'm going to put the slide up here. This is Riley's contact information. You can refer to this when you download this presentation. And this concludes our webinar presentation. I want to thank everyone for joining us today, everyone who participated in the Q&A and in the polling. Thank you very much, have a great day, and this webinar will be available online shortly. Thanks very much. Bye bye.