Teaching across state lines

Penn's Nursing School offers distance-learning courses via computer. At a Memphis, Tenn., hospital, seven nursing students sit attentively while their professor lectures to them on subjects including pediatric oncology and pharmacology. But there's a difference here from a traditional nursing class -- the professor is broadcast live from Philadelphia on TV. Since 1994, Penn's Nursing School has offered students in far away places access to some of the school's specialized courses through cameras, video tapes and computers, all without having students step onto its campus. "We can ask questions and we can stop the professor if we don't understand something, just like if we were there," Cindy Burleson, a nursing student at St. Jude's Hospital in Memphis, said of the interactive broadcast. The program was originally started to increase the number of trained midwives in rural parts of Pennsylvania, explained Sister Teresita Hinnegan, a Penn Nursing professor and the director of the school's distance learning program. To this effect, the University began offering master's degree courses in midwifery at distance learning centers in the state. Now they teach in Allegheny, Scranton, Coalport and Hershey, Pa. The state pays the technological and tuition costs. Since then, the program has expanded beyond the state's borders. St. Jude doctors said the decision last fall to have Penn educate their nurses reflects the high regard they have for their colleagues in Philadelphia. "We have access to more than a dozen experts in pediatrics that we would not have otherwise," said Pam Hinds, of St. Jude's hospital. "We have a tremendous match with what's being offered and what we need." The Nursing School's distance learning program in Memphis currently offers two master's degree courses, midwifery and pediatric oncology, and St. Jude's covers the expenses. Students in Pennsylvania and Tennessee spend three to six hours a week watching lectures on their television screens while interacting with their professors in real time. During the rest of the week, the students -- who are already registered nurses -- conduct the clinical portion of their training under the direction of a Penn-appointed preceptor, who is selected by the Nursing School from a pool of applicants local to that area. "It's getting education out to people in rural areas who would never get to a campus at Penn or anywhere else, especially to women," Hinnegan said. "It's more difficult for women to leave their families." The midwifery course that Hinnegan began uses Pennsylvania's T1 Healthnet connection to link the distance learning lab in the Nursing Education Building with that of classrooms linked to the network across the state. A similar network links the Nursing School with St. Jude's. Kevin McGuire, technical manager of the distance learning center, said that the technology itself does not diminish the learning experience. "It's almost as if they're sitting in the same classroom," McGuire said. "After a while, you stop paying attention to the technology and pay attention to the people at the other end." When St. Jude's decided to expand its number of nurses trained in pediatric oncology -- the center treats the most cases of childhood cancer in the world -- they turned to Penn's Nursing School, which services the world's second largest number of childhood cancer cases -- at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "It is helping them expand in terms of the numbers of patients and in the number of services," said Nursing Professor Jan Deatrick, who is helping coordinate the program. At St. Jude's, there is also a full-time instructor supervising the seven enrolled students. As the boundaries of technology are pushed further forward, popular expectations abound that flesh-and-blood professors will be replaced by pre-recorded lectures. But according to Hinnegan, given the nature of the nursing field, that won't ever happen. "Human interaction is very important in a profession that is hands on," Hinnegan said. "We're a relationship profession."

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