Lackawanna College Honesdale Center Nurse Aide Graduates Succeed

Lackawanna College Honesdale Center Nurse Aide Graduates —Front row from left to right: Melissa Maher, Anne Doherty and Elaine Polanco. Second row from left to right: Louanne Navoy, Joyce H. Davis, RN MSN—nurse aide instructor, and Christi Hocker

Five members of a recent Nurse Aide Training Program at Lackawanna College’s Honesdale Center have successfully passed the American Red Cross Nurse Aide Competency Examination. The students continued the remarkable record of success for the program which the College began in Scranton in July 2006 and introduced in Wayne County last December. The Nurse Aide Program prepares students to provide basic nursing services and patient care assistance in hospital and nursing home situations.

The local graduates are Anne Doherty, Hawley; Christi Hocker, Milanville; Louanne Navoy, Hawley; Melissa Maher, Milford; and Elaine Polance, Hawley.

The Honesdale Center’s program, which is authorized by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, runs for twelve weeks, evenings and weekends, and covers 200 hours of instruction. Students undertake eight weeks of didactic instruction and four weeks of hands-on, supervised clinical experience. Two weeks of clinical instruction requires practice in a long-term care facility; the other two weeks involves training in a hospital acute care setting. Many participants in the program are eligible for funding for this program through local CareerLinks, Workforce Investment Boards or other agencies.

Areas of instruction include Introduction to Health Care, Basic Nursing Skills, CPR, Communications Skills, Resident’s Rights, Infection Control, Nutrition, Body Systems, Common Diseases, Death and Dying, and Intervention Strategies. The college has created a fully equipped facility for teaching purposes at its Honesdale Center.

“There has been a strong demand for Nurse Aide training in the workplace with jobs readily available to Lackawanna graduates,” said Diane Puhalla, Director of Lackawanna’s Honesdale Center. “This program provides practical education in a concentrated period of time so that participants can quickly enter the waiting job market. The tremendous success of the program’s graduates on the certifying examination demonstrates their readiness to begin work.”