JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A new accelerated masters degree at Jacksonville University is hoping to fill a need in the healthcare field.
The new program that starts in Fall 2025 would launch students with a non-nursing bachelor’s degree into more advanced leadership and clinical positions in the health care industry.
The Accelerated Direct Entry Master of Science in Nursing is a 20-month program that will provide students with skills in patient care, leadership, health education and informatics.
Dr. Lindsay Wolf, associate dean of Keigwin School of Nursing, said the program is the first of its kind in Northeast Florida.
“They will be bedside sitting for the NCLEX, which is the registered nurse state licensing exam, but entering as a Master’s prepared bedside nurse,” said Dr. Wolf.
Students will start their programs in the simulation lab. Amee Jones is Jacksonville University’s Director of the Simulation Center. She explained they try to take students’ learning and apply it to real life scenarios in the lab but through fun activities like escape rooms.
“Who doesn’t want to do an escape room, right? So you get to find clues and figure things out, and find out what’s going on with that patient, what’s happening,” Jones said. “Then they take that, they can go all through the pathophysiology, and it just makes things like that fun.”
Jones pointed out that simulation is an important aspect of educating future nurses in order to prepare them for the real world.
“We don’t want our students practicing on patients. We want them practicing on simulators or task trainers mannequins here, that way they develop the competency that they need and the confidence that they need to practice with patients,” Jones explained.
The Florida Hospital Association reported 16,000 nursing vacancies in 2024 compared to more than 58,000 vacancies in 2022. Dr. Wolf explains that the program is addressing the nursing shortage that still exists.
“This is really helping answer the call for our community to put those entry level leaders into our community to meet the needs and to solve those problems that are at the bedside, right at patient care,” she said.
Dr. Wolf credited the “brilliance and expertise” of Leigh Hart, who is a faculty member with nearly 30 years of experience in academia, for the birth of the program.
“Her vision for this program is what allowed us to be the first in the region to offer such an innovative pathway into nursing,” Wolf said about Hart.
Learn more about the program here.
