And Next? LPN earns RN from HACC, and after BSN at ADCP, then CRNA*

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:30:05 +0000

Nick Ngumo ’10 and his brother emigrated from Kenya to the United States in 1998 to join their mother, who’d arrived several years earlier. Ngumo entered Lancaster Mennonite High School in southeast Pennsylvania, graduating in 2000 with dreams of becoming an engineer. But his mother, a nurse herself, encouraged him to enter nursing.

In 2002, Ngumo was certified as an LPN and began working at The Mennonite Home, a retirement community in Lancaster. By 2008, he’d completed his RN degree and began working in intensive care at Lancaster Regional Medical Center. Like Anne Parson ’09, one of his colleagues and friends at Lancaster Regional, Ngumo had long been interested in a career as a nurse anesthetist – an advanced nursing degree requiring years of further study. First, he’d need a bachelor’s degree; the program at EMU’s Lancaster campus was attractive and convenient.

“EMU had a good reputation, so I went there,” said Ngumo. “[ADCP] was a very good preparation both for work and continuing education.”

This year, Ngumo entered the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist program at Drexel University, a program that has very high admissions requirements, as indeed all CRNA programs do. One of his early research projects in that program, on the subject of ventilator-associated pneumonia, felt like a cinch after all the research and writing he’d had to do at EMU. After he completed the project, he wrote Priscilla Simmons, PhD, a professor and mentor of his at EMU, to thank her for the preparation.

If all goes according to plan, Ngumo will graduate as a nurse anesthetist in 2014. Further into the future, Ngumo – who married Leigh, a dietician at Lancaster General Hospital, in the spring of 2011 – has plans to return to Kenya to do health care.

* This translates as: Licensed practical nurse earns certification as a registered nurse from harrisburg area community college, then bachelor of science in nursing from eastern mennonite university’s adult degree completion program. next up is earning a degree as a certified registered nurse anesthetist.

CRNA…Another rung on the nursing ladder, with hospital job awaiting her in 2012*

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 16:26:54 +0000

The small class size, and the way the students in it looked out for each other during the 18-month nursing program, figure high on the list of reasons why Anne Parson ’09 enjoyed her experience in the RN to BS degree in nursing program at EMU’s Lancaster (Pa.) campus.

“I’m a small-group, ‘homey-feeling’ kind of girl,” said Parson. “We all started together, stayed together, and supported each other.”

Parson, a native of Lancaster County, worked full-time as an RN at Lancaster Regional Medical Center while she attended classes at EMU. Ever since she’d begun training as a nurse, Parson had been attracted to anesthesia. Because a bachelor’s degree is a prerequisite for further training as an anesthetist, and because she needed to fit further education around her work and life responsibilities, the ADCP program through EMU was a natural choice.

While the writing component of the program stretched Parson “in a way that nursing hadn’t,” by the time she’d finished it, her desire to work in anesthesia had been confirmed.

Now enrolled full-time in a competitive Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist program at York College of Pennsylvania, Parson expects to graduate in May 2012. After that, she already has a job waiting at York Hospital.

In the midst of clinical rotations, life is busy these days, but any time she finds herself with a few spare minutes on the east side of town, Parson stops in to say hi to the ADCP instructors and staff who played important parts in the development of her career as a nurse.

* The website of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists – www.aana.com –details the high entrance requirements for admission to CRNA programs and states: “Reflecting the level of responsibility, CRNAs are one of the best paid nursing specialties. The reported average annual salary in 2005 was approximately $160,000.”

Anne Parson Archives - EMU News

And Next? LPN earns RN from HACC, and after BSN at ADCP, then CRNA*

CRNA…Another rung on the nursing ladder, with hospital job awaiting her in 2012*