The small class size, and the way the students in it looked out for each other during the 18-month nursing program, figure high on the list of reasons why Anne Parson ’09 enjoyed her experience in the RN to BS degree in nursing program at EMU’s Lancaster (Pa.) campus.
“I’m a small-group, ‘homey-feeling’ kind of girl,” said Parson. “We all started together, stayed together, and supported each other.”
Parson, a native of Lancaster County, worked full-time as an RN at Lancaster Regional Medical Center while she attended classes at EMU. Ever since she’d begun training as a nurse, Parson had been attracted to anesthesia. Because a bachelor’s degree is a prerequisite for further training as an anesthetist, and because she needed to fit further education around her work and life responsibilities, the ADCP program through EMU was a natural choice.
While the writing component of the program stretched Parson “in a way that nursing hadn’t,” by the time she’d finished it, her desire to work in anesthesia had been confirmed.
Now enrolled full-time in a competitive Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist program at York College of Pennsylvania, Parson expects to graduate in May 2012. After that, she already has a job waiting at York Hospital.
In the midst of clinical rotations, life is busy these days, but any time she finds herself with a few spare minutes on the east side of town, Parson stops in to say hi to the ADCP instructors and staff who played important parts in the development of her career as a nurse.
* The website of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists – www.aana.com –details the high entrance requirements for admission to CRNA programs and states: “Reflecting the level of responsibility, CRNAs are one of the best paid nursing specialties. The reported average annual salary in 2005 was approximately $160,000.”