Many of our military transitioning to civilian life are expertly trained medics, corpsmen, and health care specialists.
The medical training of these veterans does not follow traditional degree granting academic protocols. These individuals seeking formal academic credentials to work in the nonmilitary sector are often forced to start their health education over from the beginning.
An innovative model was developed for waiving the requirements for specific nursing courses for veteran-students. Using a skills self-assessment tool and a validation process, veteran-students are able to demonstrate their knowledge, training, and experience.
As part of the program, 32 veteran-students have validated out of 65 courses for 115 credit hours. All students have successfully progressed through the BSN program.
This skills validation model represents a model that can be implemented for students entering a nursing program with a variety of health care backgrounds.
Author Affiliations: Assistant Professor (Drs McLain and Moore), School of Nursing, and Associate Professor (Dr Hites), School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
This project was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administrations (HRSA) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under award 6 UF1HP26483-04-03, Veterans-to-BSN. This information or content and conclusions are those of the authors and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, or should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS, or the US Government.
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Correspondence: Dr McLain, University of Alabama at Birmingham, NB 207A, 1720 2nd Ave South, Birmingham, AL 35294 (Rho211@uab.edu).
Supplemental digital content is available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal’s Web site (www.nurseeducatoronline.com).
Accepted for publication: January 7, 2019
Published ahead of print: February 20, 2019
Cite this article as: McLain RM, Moore R, Hites L. Innovative model to recognize previous military training of BSN students. Nurse Educ. 2020;45(1):21–24. doi: 10.1097/NNE.0000000000000659
Online date: February 21, 2019
