By Brooke Framel
Courtney Stites graduated from the RSU Nursing Program last May, and now she knows she made the right choice.
“I first started going to college at Tulsa Community College, but quickly switched to RSU when I found out about the nursing program they offered,” she says.
With the quality education Stites received at RSU, she is now confident in her work environment at the Oklahoma Heart Institute at Hillcrest Hospital.
“Obviously, when I first went into the hospital as a licensed RN, I was nervous, but because of the interning position I already had at the same hospital, I was much more comfortable than I would have been,” she says.
Stites feels as though the RSU Nursing program has done an excellent job at giving her the tools necessary to do her job right. She says her nursing tech experience prepared her.
“We started out having clinicals two days a week and then eventually went to one day a week, and we had 12 hour shifts, so it helped us get used to working long shifts.”
RSU nursing students typically score higher on the RN licensure examination than most graduates from other Oklahoma colleges or Universities. Also, their scores are generally much higher than the national average.
“I think all of the nursing students were well prepared for the NCLEX exam, which is the board test we have to take to get certified.”
Stites says the facilities at RSU plus experienced professors provide nursing students with everything they need to be successful healthcare providers.
“Even though I hated getting up so early to get to clinicals, it was an amazing experience that I would never take back. It really gave me an insight on my future nursing position, and it prepared me for almost anything.”
Not only do the instructors of the nursing program at RSU help prepare their students for the tasks they will later handle with their RN degrees, but they also prepare their students for the job application process.
“We had to take a class in one of our last lectures that helped to prepare us for our interviews and also on how to put our resumes together. I think this section in our book was very informative, I actually went over that whole section in our book before I went to my interview and it was extremely useful.”
Another aspect of the nursing program that Courtney really enjoyed was the fact that the nursing students were so involved in the program as far as decisions that need to be made and things that need to be changed. The SNA, Student Nursing Association, comes together about once a month to discuss what types of things need to be changed and what aspects the students feel are helping them the most. This gives the nursing students a chance to voice their opinions on anything they feel is important.
“While I was in the program we actually ended up changing how we did our quizzes. Someone in the program suggested that we stopped doing the quizzes because they were not useful and the majority vote of the students chose to agree.”
Stites says experience, confidence and readiness are all qualities she brings to her real-world job at the Oklahoma Heart Institute at Hillcrest Hospital, qualities she learned through the RSU nursing program.