ARLINGTON - Stephanie Wilson is graduating from nursing school without ever having stepped foot in a lecture hall. All of her coursework, including medical procedures, was learned on a laptop.
"We watched lectures and video on how to do them," she said. "So, we would have an idea of how to do them before we went and did them on mannequins or anything like that."
It's part of a new online nursing program at the University of Texas at Arlington. Texas is one of many states facing a nursing shortage.
According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of registered nurses is expected to increase more than 22 percent by 2018, which is more than half a million jobs created. But, there aren't enough nursing schools to handle those numbers.
UTA currently turns away about half the qualified nursing students because it just doesn't have the classroom space or faculty to accommodate them.
Thirty-one students are graduating from the state's first online program designed to churn out more first-time nurses.
"Thirty-one students is not going to meet the nursing shortage you know, but we see it as the beginning of a model that will be successful as another way to increase enrollment in ways that we have not done before," said Elizabeth Poster, UTA's dean of the College of Nursing.
Students still have to practice skills they've learned on the computer at the school's smart hospital. They also partner with North Texas hospitals for hands-on experience.
Wilson was placed on waiting list for UTA's traditional nursing school, but now believes her online education rivals that of the traditional program.
"I was impressed," she said.
The online route is also faster, getting students into the nursing workforce at least a semester sooner.
