Filling an acute need

Walk into the critical-care nursing class at Northern Essex Community College in Lawrence, and, for a moment, you might think you're in an intensive-care unit. There are beeping sounds, the in-and-out hushes of a breathing machine, and patients lying still on beds.

OK, the patients are mannequins, but they seem like real people. In fact, the whole setup seems real, which is the point of the college's new program to train nurses for critical-care nursing.

This semester, Northern Essex Community College launched a new program to train registered nurses for intensive-care units and emergency departments. The 14-credit certificate program, which is open to registered nurses with one or more years of experience, puts nurses in situations in which they must think and act quickly to save patients. Nurses in the program are taught how to monitor and care for patients in highly intense situations.

They are also trained on how to transport patients with the right equipment to the proper location in a hospital for advanced care. That may sound easy, but it's not, said Bob Palmer, an instructor at Northern Essex. One wrong move could prove fatal.

''Before, a lot of critical care nurses were just thrown into the ICU and had on-the-job training as their education," Palmer said. ''What this program does is give registered nurses that much-needed training before they are put in live situations, so when they walk into the ICU, they have the advanced knowledge."

Critical-care nurses differ from other nurses because they are required to have a specialized body of knowledge. They can take on a variety of roles, including bedside clinicians, nurse educators, and nurse practitioners.

The idea for the Northern Essex program resulted when Shaw Rosen, former executive director of the Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board, identified critical-care nurses as a hiring priority in the Merrimack Valley. Like the rest of the state, the Merrimack Valley has an overall nursing shortage.

The Workforce Investment Board is appointed by the mayor of Lawrence to oversee federally funded employment and training programs and address labor-market needs, according to its website.

The board's research ''showed that 50 percent of the job postings for nurses in the Merrimack Valley were for critical-care nurses," said Jackie Long Goding, dean of health professions at Northern Essex Community College.

That shortage is affecting every area in nursing, state numbers show, and is predicted to get even worse. The Massachusetts Hospital Association predicts that the statewide shortage will reach 10,000 nurses by 2010 and about 25,000 by 2020.

The national shortage is estimated to hit close to a million nurses by 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the US Department of Labor. That could spell trouble for most hospitals, which will soon be caring for about 78 million aging baby boomers.

According to a study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, there are about 400,000 nurses in the United States who care for critically ill patients in hospitals. About half work in intensive-care units, the study said.

Shortages of nurses are so bad that hospitals around the country are offering signing bonuses, relocation packages, and other incentives to attract nurses. Some are even waiving requirements for surgical nursing experience in order to recruit critical-care nurses.

The director of education at Merrimack Valley Hospital, Constance Gagnon, said the Northern Essex program will allow for the grooming of local nurses, who are more likely to stay in the area, to fill critical-care positions.

''This program is giving us the opportunity to grow our own nurses," Gagnon said. ''Nurses who are working in noncritical-care areas and wish to transition to a critical-care position are able to receive the education they need to succeed in this role."

The four new courses at the college were developed by local healthcare professionals and include a 120-hour externship. Courses will be offered evenings and weekends to accommodate the schedules of working nurses.

Six nurses have signed up for the program so far.

During a recent class, students Meg Shelton and Laurel Gagen took notes and analyzed machines as Palmer gave them real-life scenarios. They practiced giving injections and inserting catheters through the nostrils of the mannequins. They also were given a time period to figure out what was wrong with patients if machines gave certain readings.

''These are life-and-death situations and will require you to act immediately," Palmer said.