Chamberlain University and the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) announced that three health care systems will be the first to join a workforce preparedness initiative addressing critical shortages of operating room nurses: Loyola Medicine, based in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois; Ochsner Health, located in the New Orleans area and serving the Gulf South; and Emory Healthcare in the Atlanta metropolitan region.
Starting in early 2022, Chamberlain and AORN will launch a 16-week online training module in perioperative nursing with content developed by AORN and available through Chamberlain that leads to a specialty badge. The initiative, designed to be aligned with perioperative industry-specific competencies defined by AORN, is a non-credit bearing program offered at no additional cost to students enrolled in Chamberlain’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program.
The three health care systems are joining with Chamberlain to provide students with on-site opportunities to gain insight in a supervised perioperative setting.
The specialty badge program is designed to create a pipeline of perioperative nurses, also referred to as operating room nurses or surgical nurses, who work with surgical patients in the pre- and intra-operative process and through recovery in post-anesthesia care units. A 2021 research paper, “The State of the Perioperative Nursing Specialty Workforce,” outlines how academic partnerships with hospital facilities can address recruitment and retention challenges as well as be cost-effective. It can cost up to $120,000 to train and prepare a new perioperative nurse1, according to the research paper.
The need for perioperative nurses is expected to grow due to an increased volume of surgeries and a nationwide shortage of qualified nurses, according to AORN. Contributing to the shortage is that 20% of operating room nurses are expected to reach retirement age within the next five years, according to data collected by AORN2. Chamberlain, which is part of the Chicago-based workforce solutions provider Adtalem Global Education (NYSE: ATGE), will begin offering the specialty badge program to students at campuses in Chicago, Tinley Park, Ill., Addison, Ill., New Orleans and Atlanta, with the intent to expand nationally across all 23 of its campuses. For additional information: www.chamberlain.edu/AORN-Partnership.
