According to a press release from MPCC, the nursing program at Mid-Plains Community College has been honored with an Outstanding Technical Program award from the American Technical Education Association. The recognition came Thursday afternoon during the 61st ATEA National Conference in Wichita, Kansas. The selection was based on the nursing program’s many accomplishments in 2023. Those included a 100 percent pass rate by MPCC’s Associate Degree Nursing students on their NCLEX-RN exams and a 100 percent pass rate on the NCLEX-PN exams by the Licensed Practical Nursing students. The achievements marked the first time in Mid-Plains’ history that both ADN and LPN students had received a 100 percent pass rate in the same year. Another factor that played a part in the ATEA selection was MPCC’s expansion of its Health and Science Center to meet an increased demand for more nurses and health care professionals throughout the college’s 18-county service area and beyond.
The expansion provided more space to train those professionals and included, among other amenities, a large, dividable nursing classroom, group study rooms, an EMS lab outfitted with an ambulance simulator, three nursing simulation rooms and an immersion room for training students in a variety of virtual reality simulated environments.