| Sumario: | Reports predict the demand for nurses will continue to exceed supply for the next 15 years. This demand is due in part to increases in staffing and to health care needs for an aging population. The rural areas of the United States are particularly hard hit by the nursing shortage. One Tech Prep model offered nursing education in a career ladder concept. It proposed registered nurse (RN) at the top of the ladder and the subordinate occupations of licensed vocational nurse and nurse aide as the levels beneath RN. The Congress supported such Tech Prep initiatives by appropriating $104 million of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Act for their implementation. Accountability, an assessment of performance, has become a major issue of concern for educators in recent years as taxpayers and legislators begin to question the quality and efficiency of our educational programs. Although the concept of quality control is not new, the original set of educational standards has changed to an inventory of accountability indicators. This study was designed to determine if differences existed on selected accountability measures between the high school nurse aide training programs designated Tech Prep and other nurse aide training programs in the high schools of the central United States. The hypotheses were tested in the high schools which hosted a certified nurse aide training program during the 1992-93 school year in the central United States. A survey of the fifty state regulatory agencies in charge of the certified nurse aide training indicated 84 secondary schools in this region offered such a program. Responses to a second survey were received from 69 of the program directors in these high schools. The design of the study was a descriptive comparison looking for the differences between two independent groups. The independent variable in the study was the designation of Tech Prep participation. The dependent variables were the accountability measures. Results from the study suggest no significant differences between the groups in the accountability measures of gender equity enrollment percentage, licensure passage percentage, job placement percentage, percentage pursuing further nursing education, classroom hours of training, or instructional salary cost per student. There appear to be significant differences in the measures of minority enrollment percentage and hours of training (total and clinical). Areas for further study should include a longitudinal follow-up of the students involved in this Tech Prep initiative and a replication of this study in a different section of the United States.
|
|---|