Sauk Valley Community College Continued to Produce Nurses Through Covid

By Debra Tennison

Peak Covid did affect the health program enrollment briefly, due to some hesitancy to come into a healthcare profession during a pandemic. Per Dean Vincent, this tends to be the case at times of epidemics. 

Covid has changed the atmosphere of healthcare in the last couple of years. Staff reported that during peak Covid SVCC’s nursing program only had a very brief interruption before returning to some degree of normalcy. 

Fortunately for SVCC students, local facilities continued to allow nursing students into their facilities to complete labs and clinicals during most of the outbreak. This has not been the case with many programs across the state. According to Dean Vincent, there are programs statewide that continue to struggle with ensuring their students can get the amount of clinical and lab experience required to complete their courses.

SVCC offers healthcare programs for ADNs (RN), LPNs, CNAs as well as Radiology Technicians. Current enrollment in the SVCC Nursing programs is now up to 35 first year ADN program students, 26 second year ADN students, and 18 LPN students. 

The SVCC nursing program, operating since SVCC was founded in 1965, is approved through the “Higher Learning Commission”, according to the Dean of Health Professions at SVCC, Christine Vincent. She went on to say that the program is also accredited with the ACEN (Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing), an extra accreditation which holds the program to an even higher standard than required. 

Amid a dramatic nationwide nursing shortage, SVCC and its team of Healthcare Educators continue to produce experienced nurses that are prepared to enter into a very demanding profession.