With 0K grant, Texas Wesleyan nursing students will get hands-on trauma experience
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With $500K grant, Texas Wesleyan nursing students will get hands-on trauma experience

Texas Wesleyan nurse anesthesia students train in a simulated environment. (Courtesy photo | Texas Wesleyan University)
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Helicopters, ambulances and emergency rooms will be some of the training sites for a new specialized track in trauma care at Texas Wesleyan University’s Graduate Programs of Nurse Anesthesia. 

Thanks to a $500,000 grant, the doctoral program can create a specialized two-month rotation in trauma, starting in the spring of 2025 for third-year students.

Trauma patients are often in unstable conditions and unable to communicate their medical history, allergies or medications. Terri Kane, program director of the nurse anesthesia program, said the specialization will give aspiring nurse anesthetists on-the-ground experience in a patient’s journey from crash site to operating room.

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“In trauma, you don’t know what you don’t know,” Kane said. “If I’m in the ambulance or in the helicopter, and I see how bad the car wreck was, and I see how much blood was lost at the scene, then it’s not a surprise when the patient gets to the operating room and their blood pressure is a little low.” 

With this experience, the nurses will be able to make more informed decisions in the operating room. One of the hospital sites will be John Peter Smith Hospital, one of two Level I Trauma Centers in Tarrant County. The university will seek to create specialized rotations at other hospitals in the state that have a high volume of trauma cases.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which oversees colleges and degree programs offered in the state, awarded the two-year, $500,000 grant. Texas Wesleyan’s doctoral program in nurse anesthesia is a 36-month program during which 20 months are spent doing clinicals. The grant allows selected Texas residents in the program to participate in the trauma track. 

The grant also provides financial support for attending student conferences and the acquisition of new, advanced equipment that will facilitate instruction on how to medically respond to emergency situations. Kane said she wasn’t aware of any other specialty track in the country like the one now offered at Texas Wesleyan. 

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Already, the nurse anesthesia program requires that students see 30 emergency cases, but the definition of “emergency” is broad.

“If you came to the hospital and said, ‘My stomach hurts.’ And we say, ‘Oh, it’s your appendix. Let’s go up to the (operating room) and take it out,’” said Kane. “Now, we would call that an emergency even though you’re not, like, dying.” 

In the coming months, Texas Wesleyan faculty will focus on developing curriculum. They’ll also explore if they want to create focused tracks in other specialties, like pediatrics or obstetrics.

Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.

At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

Disclosure: Texas Wesleyan University has been a financial supporter of the Fort Worth Report. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

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