KAILUA-KONA — The nursing program at Hawaii Community College-Palamanui has lifted a temporary halt on new admissions, and a full class of 10 students will begin course work in August.
Two years ago, the school graduated only 30 percent of its nursing class. Last year, admission to the program in West Hawaii was suspended, as then-director May Kealoha cited accreditation concerns islandwide with the high dropout rate as the catalyst.
The class of 2014, the last admitted before the program’s temporary suspension, graduated a full cohort of 10 students in May. After a year marked by a 100 percent graduation rate, as well as several discussions and the implementation of new strategies to avoid a repeat of the problem, the nursing program in West Hawaii is back up.
Kealoha posited in 2014 that a general lack of understanding as to what the nursing program entailed contributed to the dropout rate, as well as the logistics of fitting the education into already busy lives.
The college now feels it is better equipped to address these issues before finalizing an admission list, said Joyce Hamasaki, interim director of Nursing and dean of the Career and Technical Education Program at HCC-Palamanui.
“The nursing program is quite taxing, and it does consume a lot of time,” said Hamasaki, who taught nursing for 30 years on both sides of Hawaii Island. “Students seems to really enjoy having that extra leg up on knowing what they are getting themselves into.”
Incoming students partake in two mandatory orientation sessions the summer prior to embarking on the two-year trek toward an associate degree in nursing.
The sessions cover basic introductions to classmates and instructors as well as study skills, what life is like in the program and how to balance education with the necessities of home life.
Students also attend financial aid workshops and learn about some of the clinical requirements, not all of which are particularly glamorous.
“We think it will help them to make a decision earlier,” Hamasaki said. “If they are hesitant about whether nursing is really the profession for them, hopefully this introduction will help them to decide.”
Following mandatory orientation are optional workshops, where students are exposed to general nursing activities and begin physically learning necessary skills like taking blood pressures, locating injection sites and using and reading syringes properly.
Every year, 10 students are admitted in West Hawaii, while 20 students are admitted to the college’s nursing program in Hilo.
Hamasaki said another initiative the school is taking involves encouraging second-year students to mentor newcomers and help ease the transition, though that option won’t be available for this year’s West Hawaii class due to the admission suspension in 2015.
“We notice that makes a big difference,” Hamasaki said. “The class being admitted in the fall will not have mentors, but we have discussed setting up some sort of a mentoring program for the new class in Kona.”