Nursing accreditation review listens to community

A nursing program accreditation board visited Montana State University-Northern to review the program, which will decide next year whether it can be accredited through a national agency.

Certain parts of the program are accredited through the university system, but the board that came in Wednesday accredits the program on a national level.

The nursing program is accredited through three different avenues. Being accepted by this national accrediting agency would push the program to a more nationally recognized level.

"I thought it went very well," MSU-Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel said. "The nursing staff through the last year has literally been working, honest to God, 24/7, weekends and everything - in preparation for this review."

The accreditation board met with community members in the Hensler Auditorium in the Applied Technology Building to hear the comments and concerns of community members, educators and students.

Dave Henry, the director of Northern Montana Hospital, spoke at the meeting .

He said that part of the cause of the nursing program's decline years ago was his own, the community's and the university's fault.

"We did not do enough to make sure we had a new chancellor," Henry said, referring to former chancellor James Limbaugh, who has received much blame for the nursing program to be put in danger. " ... We can blame whomever, but we are a part of that."

Henry said the community did not do a good enough job back then to care for the students who go through the institution, but with the new leadership of current chancellor Greg Kegel the program is being cared for and a future ensured. As long as the program gets accredited.

"Without the nursing program on the Hi-Line, we are literally out of business," Henry said.

Lois Salmeron, dean and professor of the Oklahoma City University School of Nursing, was one of the women who reviewed the program Wednesday and spoke to the crowd gathered in Hensler Auditorium about the process.

She told them there are six standards, under which 30-something criteria fall. The process is long for accreditation, and the ultimate decision as to whether the program will be taken off its conditional warning for national accreditation or not will be March 10, 2016.

"It's an outside accrediting body that accredits nursing programs," Kegel said. "It's important for our graduates to graduate from a program that has that national accrediting because it allows them, when they have their nursing degree, to work in literally every state."

However, reports of the board's finding will be made available to the nursing program in 20 days, to give them idea of what aspects they fall behind on or are acceptable in.

Many of the nursing students sat in the auditorium, wearing scrubs in the school's colors and giving their own personal accounts of what the program means to them and why they need it.

Mike Tilleman, owner of Tilleman Motor Co., said he underwent an amputation some years back and the doctor who performed the operation was a former Northern nursing student. Last Labor Day, he was in a hospital in Kalispell, and his nurse was from Northern, he said.

"We need local people to work here," Tilleman said. "And if we don't have a local place to get our health, we're all in trouble."