By Grace Romund (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: December 6, 2011
There are distinct differences between professional degrees and academic degrees. A prominent professional degree at UFV is the Bachelor of Sciences in Nursing degree. At completion of this particular degree, students will be prepared to be practicing nurses; however, there is some question as to how much of UFV’s responsibility is to teach students the skill set of that field and how much of it to usher students into that professional community.
In the past, British Columbia Nursing Union (BCNU) representatives would visit the Nursing department at UFV and meet with second-year students to talk about the employed student nurse program, and then again when the students were in their fourth year and almost at the point of graduation. To date, BCNU is still able to meet with second-year students about the employed student nurse program. However, representatives from BCNU are no longer being invited to meet with fourth-year nursing students.
Linda Pipe, Fraser Valley Regional Chairperson of BCNU is the representative that has traditionally been in contact with the Nursing department. She explained that it is her responsibility as the chairperson of her region to create good relationships between BCNU and the educational institutions that offer nursing studies in her area, such as UFV.
“When we met with the fourth-year students, we gave them information regarding professional responsibility, workload issues, patient and nurse safety, and meeting your standards of practice, which in the working environment we have now is proving extremely difficult,” Pipe said.
“We’re finding that nurses just coming out of school require a lot of support,” she continued. “We talk to them about services provided to them by BCNU, how the BCNU is structured, and how they can get involved.” To practice nursing in BC, a nurse must have a license under the College of Registered Nurses of BC or the College of Licensed Practical Nurses of BC. The majority of registered nursing jobs are in worksites and hospitals that require nurses to be part of the BCNU.
Rebecca Foote, a local maternity nurse who practices at Langley Memorial Hospital, was a graduate of Trinity Western University where she did get to meet with BCNU in her fourth year. “We had a BCNU rep come and talk to us so we were aware of what to expect,” she said. “They tried to solicit us to become BCNU reps ourselves. So as a student I did know about BCNU, but not until we were in our last year. They did come to talk to us.”
Hannah MacDonald, program coordinator of the Bachelor of Sciences in Nursing degree at UFV said that having unions come in to speak to nursing students is not a requirement for entry to practice.
“We teach to competencies for our graduates that they must achieve,” MacDonald stated. “There are national standards for entry to practice. So all of our content and skills and clinical curriculum revolves around those standards, and anything else that we do is enrichment… If we have a representative come in, it’s going to be more of an enrichment experience.”
