CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020 - 25

G R A D U AT I O N

CLASS OF 2020

Coronavirus
Impacts Spring
Commencement

By Dana Brandorff

he impact of coronavirus on our students has been far reaching. Clinics and
inpatient facilities where our students
typically complete their clinical hours
shifted their focus to caring for coronavirus patients and suspended training.
"In an overabundance of caution,
our hospital/clinical partners wanted to
contain the spread of the disease and thought one of
the best ways to do so was to limit the number of people
in their facilities," said Tammy Spencer, DNP, interim
assistant dean of CU Nursing's undergraduate program.
Consequently, our students and faculty were in limbo.
Faced with an internal crisis, faculty and staff retooled our
programming and discovered new ways to help students
complete the necessary clinical requirements. "Partners
that we had not relied on heavily before, stepped up.
And we are grateful," said Senior Director of Experiential
Learning Fara Bowler, DNP. Aurora Public Schools took 92
students who needed public health hours into their school
nurse program to help with community outreach efforts.
While didactic classwork moved online, the Experiential
Learning Team ramped up virtual simulation and our
nurse-led clinics moved to telemedicine and brought in
students to assist with that need. At the recommendation
of students, our graduate programs flipped their curriculum so that clinicals would start later when hospitals and
partners have capacity.
For undergraduate student Natalie Rodarte who was 23
clinical hours away from graduating, the steps that the
College made helped move her passed the finish line. "If
my school hadn't gotten creative in how they could get my
clinical hours to be remote, I would have had to possibly
wait until the end of the year to be a nurse," said Rodarte.
"I feel prepared and ready to start my nursing career."
College leadership worked tirelessly behind the scenes
with clinical partners, university, state and local leadership

to obtain the hours they needed to graduate this semester.
They also lobbied Governor Jared Polis and wrote letters
to the State Board of Nursing. Their efforts paid off when
the governor issued an Executive Order that allowed virtual
simulation and volunteer hours (in some cases) to substitute for program completion requirements. However,
we have yet to hear from the State Board of Nursing with
regard to our request for waiver of clinical hours.
According to Spencer and Bowler, if the waiver is not
granted it could cause a backlog of students needing to
fulfill their clinical hours once the pandemic is over. "Think
about the impact that this is going to have on our workforce
around the state, again, at a time when we are in the midst
of a nursing shortage," Spencer said.
"We want to make sure that the nursing workforce is well
stocked. We have nursing students who are so eager to start
their careers and they are so ready to get out there and to
take care of patients," said Spencer. Rest assured that CU
Nursing will continue to advocate to our highest ability
to see that our students are given the chance to do so.

CUSNA
President Natalie
Rodarte.

CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020