Osbourn nursing program includes students, adults

By Amanda Stewart

Published: May 24, 2008

A group of about 20 nursing students crowded around a hospital bed in an Osbourn Park High School classroom on a recent May afternoon.

Their patient: a female mannequin with wavy reddish brown hair, a glassy-eyed stare and an abdominal wound.

The nurses-in-training, who ranged in age from 18 to about 50, listened and watched their instructor, Beverly Marolda, demonstrate wound care techniques.

The lesson was part of a Nursing I class taught in Osbourn Park's Practical Nursing program.

The two-year program, offered through Prince William County Public Schools and open to adults and high school seniors in Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park, trains students to become licensed practical nurses.

"The program started in 1969 in the county schools as a way to give high school students a head start, basi-cally, on a career," said program director Charlene

Morrow.

Typically, the first-year students are separated into two classes: one class of high school seniors and one class of adults, Morrow said.

Students in their high school class said the program offered them a way to get a head start on their careers.

"I wanted to have some experience for when I move to medical school one day," said Osbourn Park senior Jose Alvarado, 18.

"It's a good thing because nine months after you graduate [high school] you can get a professional career," Alvarado said of the

program.

For students in the adult classes, the focus is more on starting again.

"This is a second career for a lot of us," said adult student Pam Henson.

Many of the adult students worked and volunteered in health care in some capacity for years before deciding to take the classes to become an LPN.

Henson currently does administrative work for the county's Community Services Board.

"I never felt like administrative work was my career. It just paid the bills," Henson said. "But this is, nursing, is where my heart is. This is my career."

Some of the adult students said they've taken LPN classes before, at area community colleges.

"I've been in other nursing programs before," said Sylvia Coleman. "I enjoy the smaller class size here and everybody is just willing to help you out."

In the first year, students spend most of their time in the classroom, learning the basics.

"The first year is all about the well body," said Marolda. "The focus is on basic skills and patient care."

They practice skills and techniques on mannequins stationed throughout several classrooms in the back of the school. Some of the more life-like mannequins talk and make breath and heartbeat sounds, Morrow said.

In the second year of the program, students still take classroom instruction, but they also spend more time outside of the classroom, working with real patients in area hospitals, nursing homes and doctors' offices.

That's when students "go from memorization to application," second-year instructor Tammy Dean said.

"It's basically taking what they learn in the first year and applying it," Dean said.

Working with real patients who suffer from the afflictions students learn about in class injects a dose of reality into the program, she said.

"It becomes not just somebody in a book," Dean said.

At the end of the second year, students who pass the course graduate and qualify to take the state licensing test given by the Virginia State Board of Nursing to become LPNs.

This year, 15 second-year students graduated at a ceremony at Osbourn Park on Friday, Morrow said.

According to state statistics, most students who go through Osbourn Park's program and take the test to become licensed practical nurses pass.

In 2007, 21 out of 22 students from the program who took the licensing test passed, according to State Board of Nursing statistics.

Some students then get jobs as LPNs, others go on to receive further training to become RNs, instructors said.

Many students who go through the program at Osbourn Park stay in the area, working in local doctors' of-fices and at Potomac Hospital, Dean said.

"Physicians here are very familiar with our program," Dean said. "When they hear we are gradu-ating a class, they start to call our office because they want to hire our students."

Students apply to enter the nursing program; 25 high school seniors and 25 adults are accepted each year, Morrow said.

Tuition for the first year is free for high school seniors, while adults pay $3,000. All students pay $4,100 for the second year.

Students in Osbourn Park's program this year said they worked in the health industry for years and recently decided to take her career to the next level.

The first-year program is part-time; high school seniors spend two class periods a day in the class, before going on to other classes. Most adult students work before or after their class, which meets for two hours and 15 minutes a day.

The second-year program is full-time, about seven hours a day, Dean said.

High school seniors in the program said the class is challenging, but rewarding.

"They're told right up front that it's a very intensive class because when they graduate from the program they're able to take their state boards," Marolda said. "That's a big advantage that they have."

At the end of class on a recent May morning, a group of the high school students sat around the classroom, talking about their class.

The students listed different reasons for their interest in the program.

Some, like Alvarado, hope to go to medical school one day.

Others, like 18-year-old Dana Deus, want to continue in nursing. "I've wanted to do pediatric nursing since I was in middle school," she said.

For other students, like Brooke Zuniga, 18, their interest in nursing came from personal experiences.

"My brother was in the hospital and I just saw how well the nurses took care of him," she said. "I just got interested in that."

But most students come back to one main motivating factor.

"I just like taking care of people," 19-year-old Andrea Sappingfield said with a shrug.

A student-made poster hanging in one corner of the classroom lists the top 10 other reasons to become a nurse. Number one? "Pays better than fast food, though hours aren't as good."

Soon the bell rang and it was time for the high school students to move on to their next class.

Textbooks labeled "Fundamentals of Practical Nursing" get slid into backpacks next to Algebra and government textbooks.

"This to go back to regular high school," Alvarado said, as the students filtered out of the room.

This year's graduate

Fifteen second-year students completed the practical nursing Prince William County Public Schools' program this year and graduated at a ceremony at Osbourn Park Friday.

The graduates were:

• Jaclyn Nicole Agee

• Kelly Elizabeth Costa

• Michelle Marie Grasso

• Nina Rushin B. Guevarra

• Jennifer Glenn Hansbrough

• Kimberly Ann Hatcher

• Katherine Ann Ippolito

• Maria Lidia Lopez

• Michael B. March

• Wivine Makengele Mbualungu

• Cathy Michalaki

• Ashley Nicole Mizelle

• Ann Deborah Souchak

• Christine Zipporah Thoma

• Samantha Jo William

Staff writer Amanda Stewart can be reached at 703-878-8014.

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