Update on the story: http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010..._of_nursi.html

It's a nursing school with a long and rich history. When it opened in 1884, it was the only one west of the Alleghenies. Its first graduating class -- of three students -- included a woman who worked as a missionary, then founded a hospital for women and children in India.

Later graduates of the Cleveland Training School for Nursing at Huron Road Hospital, as it was called then, went on to serve in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II and on the first staffs of the city's tuberculosis bureau, the school board's nursing department and the Visiting Nurse Association.

But some of its 384 current students say this week's sudden announcement that the school will be closing was handled poorly.

"Announcing it over the Web page was a terrible idea," said Jennifer Wehner, who started classes at the Huron School of Nursing in August.

"Personally, making a physical appearance before students would have been much more appropriate," said the Seven Hills resident. "Had the message been a little more warm and empathetic, that would've been helpful, too."

But Wehner and other students say communication improved Friday when school officials held two meetings to answer students' questions.

Wehner, a lawyer who enrolled in nursing school because she thought it would be a more stable career, said officials apologized for the way the announcement was made. It had to be made suddenly, they explained, because the information was about to leak to the public.

"Nobody's still very happy about the decision," Wehner said. "But a lot of our fears were allayed."

Among the details officials made clear Friday:

• The school, at Huron and South Pointe hospitals, will close in May 2011.

• An agreement has been reached with Cuyahoga Community College that guarantees Huron students slots there and allows them to transfer smoothly.

• Tri-C will schedule individual meetings with students interested in transferring to answer additional questions.
• Another general meeting will be held Monday for those who could not attend Friday.

"We are really doing anything we can to reassure students and to work with them," Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Heather Phillips said after the first meeting Friday. "We're trying to get students as much information as quickly as we can."

The Clinic owns Huron Hospital and its 126-year-old nursing school. It trains registered nurses in a diploma program that attracts many students who already have bachelor's or other degrees. It offers evening and weekend classes.

Friday's meetings, which were closed to the media, offered a lot of support, said second-year student Suzanne Pasanen of Euclid, who planned to graduate in December 2011.

But they didn't dissolve all the anger and tears that surfaced during the question-and-answer session with officials from Huron Hospital, the Clinic and Tri-C.

"I think that's going to take time because we're being displaced, so there's still that underlying frustration," Pasanen said. "That's probably going to be there until we're enrolled at Tri-C."

On Wednesday, officials announced that the school would close in May, according to a post on the school's website.

Angry responses followed.

Students had a long list of complaints about how the announcement was handled, from the way it was made (online) to when (the night before some of them had final exams) to what appeared to be a lack of concern over how it was disrupting their lives. A petition was started to keep the school open until the class of 2012 graduated. And questions were fired off to school officials and the media.

Some students live out of state. What options would they have? some asked. And what about students on financial aid? Would the aid transfer? They wondered whether they would have to retake admission tests, buy new uniforms and reference books and undergo another physical exam, all of which eat up students' money and time.

One of the biggest questions was why.

"It's just been a steady trend over time," Sarah Sinclair, executive chief nursing officer for the Cleveland Clinic Health System, said in a phone interview. "For the most part, for hospitals, that's not their core business."

"And we've got some great schools here in Cleveland. So you have to start asking yourself the question, 'Should we not support our community education centers, which are so rich here, as opposed to having our own?' "

Beverly Malone, chief executive officer of the National League for Nursing, said the same.

At one point there were about 2,000 U.S. diploma nursing schools, the kind that are typically based in hospitals, according to the organization. Now, that's down to 75.

"It's because nursing went into university, whether that was community college or whether it was baccalaureate programs," Malone said. "We need the best educationally prepared work force that we can get. That's the whole goal of nursing. That's what it's all about." That's especially true, she said, as the U.S. faces a shortage of doctors.

Clinic officials say they were careful to select a quality nursing program for Huron students to transfer to. They chose Tri-C, in part, because a high percentage of its students pass the licensing exam -- 94 percent in the first quarter of this year.

In addition, Tri-C will open two health careers centers in January that will allow it to add hundreds of nursing students to the 600 now enrolled.

Original story: http://www.ultimatenurse.com/forum/f...87/#post132585