THE PROJECT
OneFuture Coachella Valley
Supporting Nursing Student Success in the Coachella Valley
THE CONTEXT & CHALLENGE
The healthcare system in the Coachella Valley of Inland Southern California has experienced challenges meeting their staffing and retention needs for nurses across their hospital systems. How might they address these challenges?
THE PARTNERSHIP & APPROACH
In a joint effort to address this need, hospitals in the region came together to invest $9M in the expansion of nursing education access and support at the College of the Desert. As a part of this investment, the college received funds to open access to a larger cohort of students, training more than double the number of prospective nurses than they had before.Â
OneFuture Coachella Valley is a community-based organization in the area who focuses on supporting students, especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds in higher education, to succeed in college and in their careers upon graduating. Their holistic support provides scholarships with programming that includes advising, additional resources, and development opportunities for students to scaffold their success. With the investment of healthcare providers in the region aimed at nursing education, OneFuture Coachella Valley was perfectly positioned to support the cause.
Given the weight of the need for nurses in the region, they sought Motivate Lab’s expertise to assess the strengths and opportunities present in the nursing program as a whole and in the support they provide students in the nursing program. If they could better understand the impact of their program and the ways they could improve it, they might enhance their success in getting students through the nursing program to fill more nursing vacancies in the region.Â
In our partnership with OneFuture Coachella Valley, we constructed an assessment of student and staff perceptions of learning mindset support in their nursing program, as we know that the learning mindset climate is a significant driver of student retention and success from decades of research in education. We measured students’ experiences of Growth Mindset, Purpose & Relevance, and Sense of Belonging (i.e., Mindset GPS) supports in the learning environment. We also measured other variables among students, like their experiences of burnout in the program, their connections to employers, the organizational support they feel, and their preparedness for a key qualification exam to become a nurse (i.e., the NCLEX-RN).
THE LEARNINGS
The data we collected showcased how the supports OneFuture Coachella Valley provides students have a significant impact on the student experience across the board, and particularly for students from racially minoritized backgrounds, first-generation, and female One Future Coachella Valley students. Compared to their peers outside of the scholarship program, OneFuture Coachella Valley students felt:Â
- significantly more connected to employers,
- significantly more socially connected to their peers,Â
- the nursing program was adequately preparing them for the NCLEX-RN more strongly. Â
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Additionally, underrepresented minority, first generation, and female students receiving support from OneFuture Coachella Valley benefited from the program when compared to their peers not receiving support.
NEXT STEPS
As a result of our learnings, we are working with OneFuture Coachella Valley to expand their program supports to more students in the nursing program. We are also building a set of measurement tools to better understand the learning mindset supports recent graduates experience when they start their nursing jobs at hospitals in the region and the experiences of clinical preceptors who guide students as they train in the hospital environment. These tools will help us to gain a clearer understanding of the pipeline from college to nursing work and the ways OneFuture Coachella Valley, College of the Desert, and local hospitals can work together to better prepare students for their work as nurses and retain those nurses over time.
