Is our nursing program in need of serious expansion?
Presently, the nursing program at Saddleback seems to be next to impossible to be accepted, and even with acceptance there is a huge amount of prerequisite work and a very long wait to actually get into the program. So why, one would ask themselves, shouldn’t the school expand the program in order to let a larger number of people in?
The truth of the matter is that they should. I myself have had a large number of friends who have wanted to take up nursing as their profession because they loved the work they would be doing. However all of them have had to abandon that dream because the program has been too much of a hassle for them. Waiting for two years after acceptance to a program to start would defer anyone from wanting to follow through with it.
Expanding the program would make it possible for a larger number of students to be accepted and fulfill their dream. Yes, I am aware that the people accepted will go out into the world and become our nurses, the people who are for the most part taking care of us since, lets face it, we see our nurses a whole lot more than we ever see our doctors. I more than anyone want the people taking care of me to be well qualified. As a diabetic, I am required to see my doctor three to four times a year to get checked up; and who is the one pricking my finger, funning my labs and finding out how everything has been going? The nurses. However, all of these people that help to take care of me are well qualified because they’ve been given training by others that have been doing the same job for years, not because they waited two years to be accepted to a nursing program or because they had a 4.0.
Isn’t the whole point of going to college to learn? Without expanding the nursing program, we are denying people something they love. These are people who are eager to learn, who want to develop their craft and go out to help people who are sick and injured and in need of care.
Expanding the nursing program can only help us. As it is, we seem to be in need of more medical care professionals, and nurses are the backbone of the medical community. So I say, expand the program, let in more able bodied students to, well, study the human body. Give them the chance to excel at something they love and go out into the world to help.