Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention - Transition to Practice Program - Funding Opportunity Number: HRSA-26-086, Assistance Listing Number(s): 93.359, Applicant Name: Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), Descriptive Title of Applicant’s Project: Roads to RN: A Mobile and Allied Health Pathway to Rural Nursing Practice Project Abstract (4,000 characters or less): The project will address the nursing shortage in western and central Pennsylvania (part of Appalachia) by developing a highly structured and supported Allied Health Nursing Cohort (AHNC) within the IUP Department of Nursing’s accredited BSN program. This program will increase the number of licensed nurses who are trained in, professionally oriented toward, and personally committed to practice in the rural and underserved communities where Pennsylvania’s nursing shortage is most acute. The program will feature an enhanced, four-year BSN pathway focused on recruiting allied healthcare professionals who are committed to becoming nurses in rural areas of Pennsylvania. Addressing Pennsylvania's nursing shortage requires expanding the pool of qualified nursing candidates beyond traditional pathways. One significantly underused resource is the substantial allied health workforce of licensed practical nurses, emergency medical technicians, certified nursing assistants, medical assistants, community health workers, home health aides, and other credentialed clinical professionals who already work in healthcare settings, understand the healthcare environment, and in many cases have expressed interest in advancing their careers through nursing education. Despite these assets, allied health professionals who seek to transition into nursing face meaningful structural barriers: financial obligations that make full-time BSN enrollment difficult without support, limited academic advising networks, and a distinctive psychological challenge of simultaneously building a new nursing professional identity while managing a prior clinical identity. The result is a large workforce of clinically experienced, patient-committed allied health professionals who represent an ideal nursing pipeline, yet systematic mechanisms are needed to recruit, support, and retain these individuals through BSN completion and into rural and underserved practice settings. The eight evidence-based pillars of the Roads to RN project design include (1) The Allied Health Nursing Cohort (AHNC) Model, an allied health professional-specific cohort-based four-year pathway to a BSN; (2) a Layered Mentoring Structure consisting of faculty mentors, peer mentors, and trained preceptor mentors, (3) Transition-Aware Preceptor Training (TAPT), an IUP-developed preceptor training program to help preceptors understand the unique needs of rural nursing students transitioning from an allied health background; (4) Orientation Bridge and Professional Identity Development Workshops to instill a sense of belonging, nursing identity, and confidence in AHNC participants, (5) Wraparound Student Support, including case management advising, linkages to internal and external academic and non-academic resources, and stipend support, (6) Rural Mobile Health Outreach Unit (MHOU) to provide AHNC students experiential learning in community health screening and interprofessional collaboration opportunities, (7) The Rural Community Preceptorship (RCP), an internship-type of program to provide students with an 120 additional clinical hours beyond the standard clinical rotation, and (8) a Nursing Clinical Skills Simulation Program (NCSSP), leveraging virtual reality to develop practice scenarios aligned to MAHA priorities, through in person high fidelity simulation and virtual reality.
