Nursing students that are planning to graduate with a bachelor’s degree and continue on to a Master of Science in nursing have a new master’s program to look forward to as early as winter semester.

The Clinical Nurse Leader program (CNL) is designed to further hospital safety education.

The primary goal of the new master’s program is to “reduce risk and improve outcome for the patients and for the hospitals,” Marisa Ferrari, an assistant professor of nursing at OU said, and “to address the current needs of the hospital with their quality issues and patient safety issues.”

“It is very outcome-oriented,” she said, as the program teaches its clinical nurse leaders how to handle situations such as patient falls or hospital infections and becomes their responsibility to educate staff and patients.

Having clinical nurse leaders will save any hospital money, and the patients have a better outcome, so “it’s really a win-win for both,” Ferrari said.

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing, (AACN) developed the CNL program in 2008.

While most master’s courses are online as well as some form of a classroom component, the CNL program is completely online.

Since the program is online, OU is the only school in Michigan to have the opportunity of offering this particular nursing degree to out-of-state residents interested in the field.

Grand Valley State University and the University of Detroit Mercy are currently the only two other universities in Michigan that offer the CNL program, but both programs are not completely online.

“We’re the only ones who can offer it to other states such as Washington,” Ferrari said.

At the end of the program, nurses can sit for a certification exam as well, Ferrari said, “so they do receive certification, just like the nurse practitioner or any other advanced practice.”

The university has partnered with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, as their nursing leaders need to have certification by 2016, Ferrari said.

“They’re a large group of master’s students who are coming back for the certificate,” she said

Crittenton Medical Center has stated that they are interested in employing clinical nurse leaders but there is currently “no partnership established with them to train any of their nurses at this time,” Ferrari said.

While she is currently not planning to return to school, recent nursing graduate Courtney Rigel said the new degree “is a great idea to provide an alternative master’s program for those nurses who know they want to go back to school but are not interested in the limited choices that are available for nursing.”

Before the introduction of the CNL program for the upcoming year, there were only master’s programs in fields like nurse practitioner, a nurse midwife, a nurse anesthetist, or a clinical nurse specialist, according to Rigel.

“Even though most nurses pursue their master’s degree to change their job description, there are other nurses that would like to better themselves without changing their status as a floor nurse,” she said.

“[It] sounds like something that would be perfect for all the nurses that already love what they do now,” Rigel said, “but would still like to better their practice and the care they provide to their patients.”

For more information about the CNL program or the school of nursing at OU, visit www.oakland.edu/nursing.