Students going to Southwestern Oklahoma State University can now do their clinical rotations at Comanche County Memorial Hospital after the hospital and university recently signed an agreement.
Melissa Alvillar, the chief nursing officer at CCMH, said this gives those needing to do clinicals a local place to go. She said some people attend SWOSU virtually or travel to attend classes, and this will save those students time and money.
“Also, it will give them the opportunity to seek out employment opportunities in what’s available to them right here at home instead of having to travel to an area that they don’t intend to work,” Alvillar said.
She said they, like hospitals across the nation, are struggling to get the amount of workers needed.
“We’re not just struggling with the workforce in nursing,” she said. “We may have opportunities in accounting and biomedical engineering, and in the lab and radiology. Across the board, it takes more than just doctors and nurses to run the hospital.”
Diana “Diane” Lovell, the President of Southwestern Oklahoma State University, said you have to make it convenient for people to be able to go back to school and this partnership does just that.
“We’re also very proud to be flexible so that students can either take their classes at SWOSU or SWOSU online and be able to do their clinical hours when they can with you,” Lovell said. “Because that’s the way to get the workforce is to be flexible. You have to have different models than we had 20 years ago for how you gain a degree or certification in a certain health care field.”
This came about after Alvillar, who attended SWOSU, asked if they’d be willing to have the partnership.
“Cause I know that I lived here and went to school there,” Alvillar said. “There are several other employees that I know went to school there and live here, so why not reach out and try to provide those clinical opportunities here and hopefully grow our workforce and get the word out that while people want to go to SWOSU, they don’t have to go out of the area to get the experience.”
The two organizations just signed the agreement, so an official start date for the clinical program has not been released yet.
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