The Northern Illinois University School of Nursing, long committed to improving health care in underserved rural areas nearby, is extending higher education to nurses working in those areas. NIU is targeting nurses in Boone, Bureau, Carroll, DeKalb, Henry, Jo Daviess, La Salle, Lee, Ogle, Stevenson, Whiteside and Winnebago counties. To do this, we need to talk with the existing providers of the care and match them up with prospective students. I see practitioners working very, very hard to provide the care people need. There are never enough hours in the day or enough hands to go around.
Positions go unfilled for months there.
Flanagan is visiting medical providers in the 12 counties to establish relationships with physicians or nurse practitioners willing to take clinical students under their wings for field training. She is learning how students can enjoy unique experiences at each site and how NIU might be of assistance to the sites. Any one of them may choose to take their clinical experience in one of these new clinical sites in the rural western part of the state and then could begin practicing there. Those nurses with associate's degrees can enroll in the NIU School of Nursing's bachelor's degree completion program. The federal grant, received last summer, helps to pay for lab equipment, software and a distance education program that brings NIU's top-notch nursing faculty to rural classrooms via interactive video conferencing.