Texas Wesleyan nursing students will gain hands-on experience in trauma care thanks to $500K grant

Helicopters, ambulances and emergency rooms will be among the learning environments for a new trauma care specialty in the graduate nursing anesthesia program at Texas Wesleyan University.

The $500,000 grant will allow the doctoral program to create a specialized two-month fellowship in traumatology beginning in spring 2025 for third-year students.

Trauma patients are often in an unstable condition and are unable to communicate their medical history, allergies or medications. Terri Kane, director of the nurse anesthesiologist program, said the specialization will give aspiring nurse anesthetists field experience as a patient travels from the scene of an accident to the operating room.

“In trauma, you don’t know what you don’t know,” Kane said. “If I’m in an ambulance or a helicopter and I see how bad a car accident was and how much blood was lost at the scene, it’s not surprising when the patient comes into the operating room and their blood pressure is a little low.”

The experience will help nurses make more informed decisions in the operating room. One of the hospital units will be John Peter Smith Hospital, one of two Level I trauma centers in Tarrant County. The university will look to establish specialized rotations at other hospitals in the state that have a high volume of trauma cases.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which oversees colleges and degree programs offered in the state, awarded a two-year, $500,000 grant. Texas Wesleyan’s doctorate in nurse anesthesiology program is a 36-month program, with 20 months spent in clinical practice. The grant allows select Texas residents in the program to participate in a trauma track.

The grant also provides financial support for student conferences and the purchase of new, advanced equipment that will facilitate learning how to medically respond to emergencies. Kane said she knows of no other medical specialty program in the country like the one currently offered at Texas Wesleyan.

The current nurse anesthesiologist training program requires students to see 30 emergency cases, but the definition of an “emergency” is broad.

“If you came into the hospital and said, ‘My stomach hurts.’ And we said, ‘Oh, that’s your appendix. Let’s go to the operating room and take it out,’” Kane said. “Now we would call it an emergency, even if you’re not dying.”

In the coming months, Texas Wesleyan faculty will focus on developing curriculum. They will also explore whether they want to create targeted tracks in other specialties, such as pediatrics or obstetrics.

Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open campusShe can be reached at [email protected].

At Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of board members and financial sponsors. Read more about our editorial independence policy Here.

Disclosure: Texas Wesleyan University is Financial Sponsor Fort Worth Report. At Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of board members and financial donors. Read more about our editorial independence policy Here.

Related news