HOULTON, Maine — Thanks to technology, and an agreement with Northern Maine Community College in Presque Isle, Houlton area students will soon be helping fill a nursing shortage in Aroostook County.
Seven students are currently enrolled in NMCC’s nursing program, taking classes remotely from Houlton Regional Hospital as part of an agreement between the two organizations. The students are finishing up their third of four semesters needed to earn a two-year, nursing degree.
“The nursing shortage is real,” Houlton Regional Hospital CEO Tom Moakler said Nov. 29. “Not only for Aroostook County, but for all of Maine. We have nurses who are aging out.”
Several years ago, HRH had an arrangement with NMCC where students took classes at the Houlton Higher Education Center, and did their practical work at the hospital. In May of 2014, that program was eliminated as part of cutbacks at the college.
Because of the shortage in the Houlton area, Moakler said he reached out to NMCC about two years ago to see if the program could be reinstated.
“We shared with them that 60 percent of our nursing staff were graduates of NMCC,” he said.
The hospital now partners with NMCC, allowing students to take classes remotely from one of the hospital’s meeting rooms, using the latest in video telecommunication technology. An instructor from NMCC is present in the classroom with the students, who must travel to Presque Isle just one day a week.
A similar agreement also exists with Calais Regional Hospital.
Student Rosalie Drake of Houlton said she would not be able to pursue a nursing education if not for this program.
“Being a single mom, I want to be close to my daughter in Houlton,” she said. “For me, what better way to feel like a nurse already than coming into the hospital every day for class. They get to see you transforming from student to possible employee. That’s a big deal. I probably wouldn’t be able to do this if I had to go to Presque Isle every day.”
Student Taylor Flint of Houlton, who already works in the hospital as a medical lab technician, said she wanted to change careers and would not have been able to do it without the program.
“As a lab tech, I was behind the scenes a lot,” she said. “I really enjoyed the patient contact, so I decided to pursue a nursing career.”
Flint added she was not aware that HRH was offering such a program and was gearing herself up mentally to drive 45 miles to Presque Isle each day to take classes at NMCC.
“When I found out I could do it here, it was just a blessing,” she said.
Deborah Folsom, the nursing instructor for NMCC who is based out of the Houlton hospital, has been teaching nursing remotely for NMCC for a number of years.
“We started this program in the fall of 2016 and the program is no different than what the students are learning in Presque Isle,” Folsom said.
She explained that the two sites take turns with the teaching duties. Some days she leads the class, with Presque Isle students watching, and on other days, the Houlton students listen to an instructor at NMCC leading the class.
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- Houlton area students who have been taking nursing courses through Northern Maine Community College at Houlton Regional Hospital are, from left, Tammy Tanner, Ashley Malone, instructor Deb Folsom, Taylor Flint, Rosalie Drake, Sam Keegan, Tennille Scott and Jessica Hemingway. (Joseph Cyr)
“It is very different,” Folsom said. “What I love about this, is NMCC’s mission to bring our coursework to the community and to provide new opportunities is wonderful.”
Up until two years ago, Moakler said things were going smoothly at the hospital. The facility actually had more nurses than it needed. But within a six-month span, for varying reasons, the hospital found itself in dire need of more nurses.
“It hit us pretty significantly,” he said. “The impact that it has at the hospital is, we are limited to 25 patients because we are a critical care hospital.”
But with the current nursing shortage, however, he said HRH can only handle up to 23 patients.”
Until recently, very few patients had been transferred due to staffing limits. That is no longer the case, Moakler said.
“Because of (lack of) staffing, there are times we have to limit ourselves to just 18 patients,” he said.
At times the hospital can have more than 25 patients in the building, provided they are “observation patients” who are not officially admitted. Those patients do not count toward the 25 limit.
Moakler estimated that over the past two years, HRH has probably transferred more than 200 patients to other hospitals, due to staffing issues.
Moakler said his hope is that many of the seven students currently taking classes at the hospital will become employed at HRH but students in the program are not required to stay after they graduate.
“I think we have a pretty good shot to get them, and we will continue with this program so that every two years we will have a pool of seven or eight new nurses,” he said. “It’s pretty neat. It has far exceeded our expectations.”
