OCNE Is A Collaboration of 17 Oregon Nursing Programs
The Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education (OCNE) is a partnership of eleven Oregon community colleges and six campuses of the OHSU School of Nursing with a shared curriculum taught at each of seventeen nursing program campuses. Through OCNE, Oregon nursing programs can dramatically expand their capacity and enrollment, and prepare graduates of these programs with the competencies to address the rapidly changing health care needs of Oregon’s aging and ethnically diverse population.
678 students graduated from an OCNE School in 2021
OCNE transformed nursing education in Oregon. The consortium improved access to baccalaureate education, particularly in rural areas, and increased faculty opportunities for collaboration across campuses. We continue accepting new partner campuses. Clatsop Community College in Astoria admitted its first OCNE class in fall 2016.
Our newest partner, Columbia Gorge Community College, will begin delivering the OCNE nursing curriculum in fall 2018.
Nationally, OCNE has inspired nursing faculty around the country to engage in education redesign in order to align nursing education more closely with emerging health care needs and health care system changes, and to increase educational capacity for baccalaureate education.
Twenty years after OCNE’s initial vision, our focus remains the same: educating nurses with the competencies necessary to provide high quality, compassionate health care to all.
Major elements
OCNE programs are located in all quadrants of Oregon, in both rural and urban communities.
OCNE is often cited as an initiative primarily focused on increasing access to baccalaureate education, and this has been one of its goals. However, OCNE actually encompasses multiple initiatives necessary to meet the overarching goal of aligning nursing education with the emerging health care needs of Oregonians:
Partnerships & Collaboration – Create a partnership of Oregon’s public nursing programs.
- Changing the culture of nursing education in Oregon by moving from independent silos of education to a combined effort
- Collaboration with practice partners early and often
- Sharing instructional resources
Curriculum Transformation – A shared baccalaureate curriculum based on the competencies needed for emerging health care needs and rapidly changing health care environment.
- Intentional content reduction to facilitate deep learning of exemplars
- Reorganization of courses to base on goal of care (Health promotion, acute illness, chronic illness management & end of life care)
- Developmental stages remain present as a concept/thread through the curriculum
Pedagogy Reform – Design instruction based on cognitive science and nursing research. Focus on how people learn.
- Facilitating student learning core content/concepts deeply, then using evidence based processes to laterally learn in different arenas
- Integrate clinical into theory and vice versa
- Pooling efforts for faculty development
- Clinical Education Redesign – Changing the framework of clinical from training to a learning laboratory
- In conjunction with practice partners move from random access of clinical learning experiences to purposeful activities
- Make best use of clinical and lab resources across the state
- Transparency in expectations based on competency benchmarks
- Incorporate simulation facilities on every campus
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