ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- Mission Health is changing the educational requirements for nurses. It's eliminating LPN positions and encouraging two year degree RN's to go back to school to get their Bachelor degrees.
The full statement from Mission Health is below:
Kathy Guyette, MSN, RN, Senior Vice President Patient Care Services, Mission Health
Mission Health has no plans to eliminate Associate Degree RNs (ADNs) from our workforce. We continue to recruit and hire both ADN and BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) nurses for staff nursing roles.
Beginning in May 2013, we did begin requiring newly hired RNs in our acute care hospitals to sign a letter of commitment to obtain a BSN within six years. Mission Healths acute care hospitals are Mission Hospital, Angel Medical Center, Blue Ridge Regional Hospital, Highlands-Cashiers Hospital, McDowell Hospital, and Transylvania Regional Hospital. We deliberately made no change to RN educational requirements for those who were already employed with us at that time. We based this staffing change on evolving best practices from across the healthcare industry, including an Institute of Medicine report that sets a goal to have 80% of the nursing workforce prepared at the BSN level. Our goal has been and remains to assure that care across our settings is patient-centered and meets the highest safety standards. In light of the increasingly complex needs of our patients, nursing education and competencies must be a top priority.
Meanwhile, most acute care hospitals began eliminating LPN roles for direct care assignments more than 20 years ago. The Joint Commission and the NC Board of Nursing require RN supervision of the LPNs work. Our decision regarding LPN's is not based on cost savings but standards of care in the acute care setting.
Since 2009 Mission Health has been considering elimination of LPN positions, and we have encouraged LPNs to pursue additional training to obtain their RN. A number of our caregivers have done this, and Mission has supported these individuals with tuition reimbursement.
Currently we have approximately 34 LPN positions in our inpatient settings that will be converted to RN roles. At this time we are offering those LPNs opportunities to serve as transport nurses within the hospital, or to pursue other positions for which they are qualified.
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