Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502110003
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Mills lost her job as a credit analyst and operations officer after 18 years when Roanoke's Dominion Bank merged into First Union. She now is studying to become an occupational therapist assistant.
When she decided to take advantage of retraining money through the Fifth District Employment and Training Consortium, she was accepted into both the physical therapy and occupational therapist assistant programs at the College of Health Sciences in Roanoke.
Because she doesn't "have the greatest back," she settled on occupational therapy, but said she still wanted to make sure that it was a field with promise.
"At this point, I do not want to train again," she said recently while on a break in the school's lounge.
She's in the first year of a two-year program, and occupational therapy assistants are in such demand that students could get their tuition paid by agreeing to sign on with a particular company at graduation. Annual salaries for OTAs range from $23,500 to $37,500.
"And there's 100 percent employment," Mills said.
But while physical and occupational therapy jobs are moving up the charts in health care, specialties like respiratory therapy have plunged off the list. Registered nurses are even finding it tougher to stay employed or to find new jobs when old ones are lost when hospitals downsize.
In reaction to the changes in the types of health care workers needed, the College of Health Sciences is testing new directions.
"We hope we're somewhat on the front end," Dr. Harry Nickens, president, said.
With a $175,000 grant from the Virginia Health Care Foundation, the college is establishing the state's first physician assistant program. A second program is being started at Norfolk State but will be a year behind the one in Roanoke.
Physician assistants, who can treat patients and even prescribe some medications independent of a physician, are hot commodities as health care systems look for ways to cut costs.
Statistics shows that a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner, who has similar training and powers, can meet the needs of 80 percent of the people who contact a doctor's office, Nickens said.
The program will admit only Southwest Virginia residents and prerequisite courses for it will be offered this fall. Physician assistant speciality courses will start up in 1997 and the first class of PAs should graduate in 1999.
Simultaneous with the PA program, the college this fall will debut a program that makes it possible for nondegree registered nurses to get a bachelor's degree. The program is being financed with a five-year $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
Only 26 percent of Virginia nurses have a bachelor of science degree in nursing; the others received a two-year associate degree or three-year diplomas from hospital-based programs. Health care providers increasingly want the higher-skilled workers who can work more independently, however, Nickens said.
It's another niche for the college, he said.
Radford University already has a bachelor's degree program in nursing and a master's program in home health nursing. Virginia Western Community College offers a diploma program in nursing. And now the College of Health Sciences will have the program for nurses already in the workforce but who want to upgrade their credentials.
The college, a division of Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley, is redirecting itself in several ways, Nickens said.
It is cutting the first-year nursing class size from the usual 50 admissions to 40 because nursing jobs are getting harder to find.
Future classes will float in size depending upon the outlook for jobs, Nickens said.
The college must find ways to become less dependent upon its hospital parent, which also is charged with becoming more cost-efficient, he said.
Five-and-a-half years ago when Nickens joined the college, it got 72 percent of its operating costs from Community. Currently, 40 percent comes from Community and the plan is to continue to lower that percentage.
The school has been able to become more independent by trimming a few positions, raising tuition and going after grants - like the one from the Virginia Health Care Foundation - to support programs, Nickens said.
Also, by agreeing to be a test site for a Canadian company's computer-based training program in adult health care assessment the college is getting more than $300,000 worth of computer equipment free.
In another alliance, with the University of Texas Medical Branch School of Allied Health Sciences in Galveston, the school is getting software that enables occupational therapy students to practice reviewing medical histories and deciding on programs of therapy for patients.
The college, which is in a former apartment building near downtown, has 500 students and can handle up to 1,000, Nickens said.
Changes, he said, aren't just being made to save money. The school wants to grow.
"We continue to perceive significant growth in careers in healch care professions," he said.
by CNB