Nurse Anesthesia Program Achieves 10-Year Accreditation

“This is an outstanding accomplishment,” said Dean Jane Williams of RIC’s School of Nursing.

“And it speaks to the quality of our program and the quality of our graduates,” said Anne Tierney ’81, CRNA program administrator for St. Joseph Hospital School of Nurse Anesthesia. “It shows the confidence that the accreditors have in our partnership.”

The partnership between RIC and St. Joseph evolved from a need. In existence since 1962, St. Joseph Hospital School of Nurse Anesthesia would hold the clinical portion of their program in state at local hospitals and the academic portion at a university in Maine. This necessitated that students move out of state for two semesters to complete their academic coursework.

“My goal was to bring all of the learning back inside the state of Rhode Island,” said Tierney, who met with Williams in 2010 to discuss a formal partnership with Rhode Island College. By 2014, the new program was established.

“I saw it as a great opportunity for RIC’s School of Nursing to provide the specialized graduate-level academic coursework that St. Joseph was looking for,” said Williams. “It was a win-win opportunity for RIC, Rhode Islanders and other students who can now complete both the academic and clinical portions of the program in state. I also based my decision on the fact that St. Joseph Hospital School of Nurse Anesthesia has a long history of excellence and would make a strong partner.”

Today, courses are taught on RIC’s campus for the first two semesters and the remaining two-and-a-half semesters are spent in advanced coursework, clinical training and research at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital within St. Joseph Health Services. Courses at Fatima are taught by Tierney and Elena Litmanovich, assistant program administrator.

The program also requires clinical rotations of five to six weeks (2,000 hours), which take place primarily at Our Lady of Fatima Hospital. However, affiliated clinical sites are at Rhode Island Hospital, Hasbro Children’s Hospital, St. Vincent Hospital, MetroWest Medical Center, Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center and Roger Williams Medical Center.

Upon granting the program a 10-year accreditation, the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs noted that “very few programs are granted accreditation with no progress report required. Even fewer programs have achieved the maximum accreditation of 10 years.”

Nurse anesthetists are the highest-paid specialty in nursing. Of the seven students graduating from the partnership program in December, three have already secured employment. The program admits 10 students a year.

Applicants to the nurse anesthesia track must have a bachelor’s degree from a nationally accredited program and a minimum of one year of critical care nursing experience. Due to clinical rotations, applicants must also be licensed to practice nursing in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

RIC’s School of Nursing offers a baccalaureate nursing program; master’s programs in adult/gerontology with an acute care emphasis, nurse anesthesia and public health/community leadership; and, beginning in fall 2016, a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program.