NTI Course Raises Admission Bar

— Individuals who want to be admitted to Northwest Technical Institute’s licensed practical nursing program beginning in 2014 will need to have completed a certified nursing assistant class.

The NTI board voted 4-0 at its meeting Thursday to add the requirement after hearing from Karla Bishop, the school’s director of allied health.

NTI began offering a certified nursing course last year. It lasts six weeks and costs $480. The licensed practical nursing course lasts 18 months and costs $7,900.

The change in requirements will help applicants discern whether they are cut out for the medical field without spending so much money, Bishop said. The current dropout rate in NTI’s licensed practical nursing program is about 23 percent, with about 31 percent of those dropouts attributed to the students’ clinical skills, Bishop said.

The change also will allow the licensed practical nursing course to dedicate more teaching time to such subjects as long-term care assessments, nutritional assessments and skills nurses use in a clinic setting.

“We want to specialize in long-term care and community nursing,” Bishop said.

Taking the certified nursing assistant’s class “will give them a view of what working as a nurse at some level will be,” Bishop said. The class teaches about such things as taking vital signs, preventing and controlling infections, bathing patients and other basic nursing duties.

In the last round of applications for the licensed practical nursing program, about 70 percent of applicants had taken a certified nursing course, Bishop said.

The demand for both licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants is high in Northwest Arkansas. The demand for space in NTI’s licensed practical nursing program is high as well. The school turns down dozens of applicants for each class mainly because of a lack of space.

NTI officials want to address the lack of space by building a new facility for its allied health program. Plans for a 31,000-square-foot, $5.8 million building were unveiled in October.

NTI officials are now busy trying to arrange financial support for the project, starting with the state Legislature.

Keith Peterson, vice president of instruction, told the board Thursday five years is a realistic timeframe for getting the facility built.

“We want to see what the state’s commitment is,” Peterson said.

An idea of the state’s commitment likely will come toward the end of this legislative session, which began Monday. Peterson said the local legislators NTI officials have talked to have been “very supportive” of the proposed project.

Upcoming Events