Schools

Manhattanville College Launches Family Nurse Practitioner Program

The program will be offered in the fall at the newly-opened School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

"The FNP program is an important addition to Manhattanville’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences."
"The FNP program is an important addition to Manhattanville’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences." (Manhattanville College)

Press release from Manhattanville College:

Jan. 19, 2021

Manhattanville College today announced that it will offer a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program in the fall at its newly opened School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

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According to The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), Family Nurse Practitioners, who have a wide scope of practice and can provide care to patients of any age, are considered the cornerstone of primary healthcare with 70 percent delivering primary care in the United States. Americans sought care from approximately 290,000 FNPs for more than one billion office visits in 2019.

Debra Simons, PhD, NP, Dean, School of Nursing and Health Sciences, said, “We are delighted to offer the Master of Science in the Nursing Major: Family Nurse Practitioner Program beginning in the fall of this year. The family nurse practitioner cares for patients of all ages in hospitals, clinics, and care facilities. FNPs also teach patients to promote good health throughout the lifespan.”
In addition to the Master of Science program, the college plans to offer an advanced certificate Family Nurse Practitioner program in the future.

Orhan Hakli, DNP, RN, FNP-C, family nurse practitioner and associate dean of academic affairs in nursing, said that the program is unique because it offers entrepreneurship, medical claims/billing, legal, medical diagnostic studies, and national board exam training at the same time in the curriculum.

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“Our FNP program is founded on a holistic nursing framework that compliments and enhances the medical model,” said Hakli. “Nurse Practitioners’ role in delivering health care has changed dramatically over the past few years, and this program truly reflects this change. I believe this is a very big step towards modernizing FNP programs.”

“Students will learn the practices of design thinking as part of their coursework in the new program which will help them apply these practical problem-solving skills to their clinical practice,” said Christine Dehne, MFA, interim provost. “The introduction of design thinking will assist these future nurses in accelerating innovation and translating evidence into practice. Our Center for Design Thinking has provided training for nursing faculty to incorporate design thinking into the curriculum.”

“The core courses in this program are modern and fully online,” said Simons. “Because of the dynamic nature of the health care delivery system, students will learn to look to the future and anticipate the healthcare needs that will need to be addressed. They will learn to build and lead collaborative interprofessional teams.”

Simons added that higher level thinking will be nurtured. “We teach value-based care, social determinants of health, ethics and of course leadership and nursing theory,” she said.
Although it varies from state to state, FNPs can prescribe medications, order medical tests, and make medical diagnoses, which enables them to more directly and positively impact the lives of their patients.

The FNP program is an important addition to Manhattanville’s School of Nursing and Health Sciences.

More than 70 nursing students were accepted into the first year of the program in 2020 and the FNP program is expected to attract many additional applicants. The school already offers two degrees in nursing: Bachelor of Science in Nursing for traditional 4-year and transfer students as well as a Bachelor of Science in Nursing for second-degree students who already hold a bachelor’s degree.

Clinical Learning Laboratories at the school offer students realistic, hospital and outpatient-like settings and situations, with state-of-the-art technology that help students translate education into experience. Last year the school received a $60,000 grant through the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council to develop a $300,000 state-of-the-art Clinical Learning Laboratory (CLL), equipped with human simulators and clinical simulation environments that emulate all levels of care. The school also received a $75,000 award from the George I. Alden Trust and additional funding from other private foundations.

The new program offers learning experiences that prepare students for national board certification exams. Students will receive interprofessional training from faculty who are experts in their fields and

Manhattanville has partnerships with premier healthcare facilities for students’ practicum placements.

The new school will help meet a growing national demand for nurses. The nursing field continues to grow at an accelerated rate, with the federal government projecting an expansion of 17% each year through 2028. With increasing emphasis on preventive and end-of-life care as well as an upsurge in chronic conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity, nurses will populate more areas of the healthcare field than ever before.

According to the 2019 Department of Labor statistics, the average annual salary for Nurse Practitioners was $109,820 with New York State hiring the most NPs per year (14,060), with an annual median salary of $122,555. Overall employment of NPs in the U.S. is projected to grow 52% from 2019 to 2029, increasing more than the average of all other occupations.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), nursing school enrollment is not growing fast enough to meet the projected demand for nurses. Though the AACN reported a 3.7% enrollment increase in entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs in 2018, this remains insufficient to populate many nursing services, including nurse faculty, researchers and primary care providers. A recent survey by the AACN found that 46% of employers require, and 88% strongly prefer, new hires to have a bachelor’s degree. An estimated one million registered nurses will retire by 2030, creating a consistently high demand for a trained workforce.


This press release was produced by Manhattanville College. The views expressed here are the author's own.

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