Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Patricia Macko Inglesby was among the first class of nursing students to graduate from West Chester University in 1976. Over the next half century, she helped some of the first AIDS patients at Pennsylvania Hospital and some of the first patients with Legionnaires’ disease. She worked in cardiology and ophthalmology, and was in clinical research at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for 22 years. And even after retiring, she volunteered in the Medical Reserve Corps when the pandemic hit, testing patients for COVID-19, and traveled to Poland on a medical mission to help Ukrainian refugees. “I’ve had so many wonderful experiences,” Inglesby, 70, said. “I feel I got an excellent education at West Chester.” » READ MORE: West Chester’s new president vows to take the university from ‘almost awesome’ to ‘awesome’ amid tumultuous time in higher education The university is about to expand that opportunity to more students. At an event Saturday marking the 50-plus-year anniversary of its nursing programs, West Chester announced it would create a School of Nursing in January, giving the discipline an elevated status at Pennsylvania’s largest state university. Its nursing programs had been located within a department in its College of Health Sciences. The nursing school will remain within that college. The change, West Chester officials said, will mean more opportunities to apply for grants, generally more prestige, and more students. The school would like to increase the number of bachelor’s degree nursing students by a third, from 90 to 120. The school also offers nursing programs for those who want to get a second degree, pursue their doctoral degree, or become nurse educators. Nursing was the first doctoral degree West Chester ever offered, starting in 2013. In all, the school has nearly 500 nursing students, said Scott Heinerichs, dean of the health sciences college. “We have been operating like a school without the name, but in the public, the name school means something,” Heinerichs said. “It really does elevate the playing field.” West Chester’s increased emphasis on the field could help with the continued nursing shortage, which in 2022 was estimated to reach about 78,000 nationwide by 2025, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. But the problem could become even worse given the burnout among new nurses, in part fueled by the pandemic, said Nancy Barker, a professor and chair of West Chester’s nursing department. “We are seeing nursing burnout in higher numbers in our new grads,” she said. The Philadelphia market is poised to make a difference. It remains “highly saturated” with nursing programs, Barker said, even though the region experienced the loss of nursing programs at Lincoln University, a historically Black college, in 2023 and Cabrini University, a private Catholic school in Radnor that closed in 2024. Competition for clinical sites, though, is keen, exacerbated by the closing of a couple of local hospitals, she said. Other changes in nursing schools West Chester’s creation of a nursing school is among a growing number of changes that local colleges are making in their nursing offerings as the shortage persists. » READ MORE: St. Joe’s finalizes its merger agreement with the Pa. College of Health Sciences Chestnut Hill College this fall started a nursing program, admitting 52 students, and opened a new nursing clinical arts center. St. Joseph’s University last year began offering nursing programs after its merger with the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences in Lancaster. Gwynedd Mercy University kicked off new online graduate programs in nursing in May and plans to add a master of science in nursing in the spring. Temple University started a nursing scholars program last year, in which participants are eligible for up to $40,000 of loan sponsorship, funded by Temple Health with support from the state, if they agree to work for Temple Health after graduating. Forty-eight students so far have committed to the program, the university said. Rutgers-Camden in the fall initiated a new program with the LEAP Academy Charter School in which 10 LEAP students are enrolled in a seminar in professional nursing at the university. They are in classes with Rutgers sophomores and on a path to learn more about a career in nursing. At West Chester’s celebration on Saturday, Adam Hudson, 21, a senior nursing student, demonstrated the advanced technology used in nursing education and how it has changed over the years. Students now in the lab can hear what a cardiac murmur or asthmatic wheezing sounds like and see a cardiac arrest and postpartum hemorrhage with fake blood, Barker said. In the past, students got whatever they happened to experience on clinical rotations, and that was it, she said. Hudson said he is glad he chose West Chester and nursing. “I really love it,” said Hudson, who is from Berks County. “There are some hard times, especially when a patient codes or has some like acute distress happening and the patient’s family member is there, and you kind of have to devote time for the family member, too, especially if they don’t know what’s happening and they’re in emotional distress as well.” He also saw how much his older sister, Molly, who got her nursing degree at West Chester in 2019, enjoys her job. She works in the pediatric intensive care unit at Hershey Medical Center. “I’m really proud of Adam because as a male in this field, he really kind of stepped up and didn’t shy away from the gender roles that have plagued us in the past,” said his mother, Kelly Rexford-Hudson, 62, a nurse practitioner who works for Penn State Health. “I was sort of hoping with his example more young men will consider a nursing profession.” She is pursuing her doctoral degree in nursing at West Chester. “West Chester was the best choice for us,” she said. Inglesby was traveling and could not attend the West Chester event, but she donated the nursing pin she received when she graduated. She lives in West Chester with her husband, Paul, and often drives by the school. She endowed a nursing scholarship in the name of her parents, Edward and Mary Macko. “My biggest hope is that the nurses will continue their education,” she said. “I hope that their nursing experiences, adventures, and their journey will be as wonderful as mine was.”
