Net Nurses: Online Nursing School?

HOUSTON - America needs nurses. By some estimates, there are more than 100,000 unfilled positions.

So why not allow students to earn their RNs over their DSL?

Why not, indeed? A new online nursing program has just enrolled its first few dozen students in Texas.

One of them is Dr. Michael Smith, a Clear Lake chiropractor who is reacting to the uncertainties unleashed by health care reform.

’We're concerned,’ Smith says, ’about the possibilities of our placement as a chiropractor, within the national health care field.’

Most nurses are forged in the crucible of nursing school.

But Dr. Smith’s crucible is his keyboard.

Turns out, one reason there aren’t enough nurses is that there aren’t enough nursing instructors. That forces brick-and-mortar schools to ration their acceptance letters.

’The latest numbers are that there are 50-thousand qualified applicants turned away from nursing schools, every year,’ says Jan Jones-Schenk, chief nursing officer for Western Governors University, which offers the online class.

While Dr. Smith has 29-years of experience in the medical field, other students are fresh-faced 20-somethings with associate’s degrees.

That’s not a comforting thought for Denise Pack, the daughter of a nurse and niece of a doctor.

’I can't imagine getting a nursing degree online,’ says Pack. ’That just-- I don't know, it doesn't set well with me.’

But WGU’s chief nursing officer assures FOX 26 News, her newbie students get a hands-on education.

’The theory is all online,’ says Jones-Schenk. ’But then they must attend labs, clinical labs and high-fidelity simulations and do actual clinical rotations.’

While WGU’s RN program includes fieldwork, the school’s higher nursing degrees are online-only since those students already have bedside experience.