Throughout October, Visiting Nurse and Hospice for Vermont and New Hampshire (VNH) hosted drive-thru and walk-in flu clinics in the Upper Valley. This year, VNH partnered with nursing students from Castleton University to deliver the vaccine.
This hands-on training proved to be helpful for the Castleton University nursing students.
A current nursing student at CU, Danielle Fitzsimmons, said: “I am learning technique and getting experience interacting with people by providing them patient education about the vaccine, talking with them about concerns and making them feel comfortable,” she said. “We’ve been going over everything that we are learning in school and putting it into practice, it’s great!”
The U.S. nursing schools turned away 68,938 qualified applicants in 2014, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) report on 2014-2015 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing. The greatest challenge to enrollment capacity identified by the National League of Nursing (NLN) is a widespread lack of clinical sites for nursing students. VNH is working towards a clinical rotation in home health to not only help with the shortage of clinical sites, but to raise awareness about community-based home health nursing as a career path.
