Nursing students with Beal University Canada have been engaged in clinical studies since the end of October in a newly renovated, nearly 10,000 square foot wing of the Sackville hospital, and last Monday, dignitaries and community members gathered to officially launch the new campus.
Health minister John Dornan says he first heard the idea to bring nursing students to Sackville from Rural Health Action Group co-chair and former Sackville mayor Pat Estabrooks. “At the time, I thought, boy, that’s a stretch,” recalled Dornan. “And then I had a chance to speak to Beal University in the US.”
New Brunswick’s relationship with the US school dates back to before the pandemic, when the Higgs PC government reached out to partner with the Maine college. That kickstarted the long process to form Beal University Canada, and also resulted in a provincial grant program in 2023 that promised $6000 to New Brunswick students enrolling in the US university. According to New Brunswick health spokesperson Sean Hatchard, 71 students signed up for the now closed grant program in 2023 and they have received $213,000 in grants so far.
Beal University Canada opened its Bachelor of Science in Nursing program in January 2024, and roughly a year later nearly 100 nursing students are enrolled in a combination of online learning and in-person clinical studies at the new hospital campus.
Pat Estabrooks was at the celebration last week, as well as another former Sackville mayor, Shawn Mesheau, who was serving as mayor when Estabrooks and Dornan first discussed the possibility of nursing education at the hospital.
“It was Shawn [Mesheau] and the council that decided that that was an excellent idea,” recalled Estabrooks. “That section of our hospital had not been used for ages, but for office space,” said Estabrooks. “So it’s a wonderful use of it… We’re so happy to have them here.”
“Education is a big part of our community,” said Mesheau. “With Mount Allison and now Beal, it says a lot. I think it sends the right message to the province, to the Maritimes, to Canada that you know, we’re a force to be reckoned with here.”
The nearly 10,000 square feet now used by Beal is located in the former Queen’s Unit of the hospital, and the move did displace some Horizon health services. Diabetic education and respiratory therapy services were moved out of the hospital and into leased spaces across the parking lot in the Tantramar Community Health Centre. Other services were relocated within the hospital itself, involving some internal renovations. Horizon also expanded the hospital parking lot in 2023 to add 88 spaces, in part to accommodate the arrival of the new nursing program.
CHMA asked Horizon on January 27 for the amount spent on renovations required to make room for Beal. As of February 4, Horizon says it is still working on that information request.
Horizon CEO Margaret Melanson said the physical changes to the hospital did not impact patients.
“I would say it has not affected Horizon’s operations, day to day at all,” said Melanson, noting the space now used by Beal contained primarily administrative offices. “Over the years, the number of inpatient beds at this facility had decreased, so we certainly were not impacting patients to allow this space to be available. We feel it’s a win, win.”
‘Everything we need’
Beal Canada has 15 to 20 staff working at its Sackville campus, and about 100 students in the program taking online courses and clinical studies. Overseeing them all is Beal University Canada Dean Jesse Johnson, a Nova Scotian ex-pat who had been living and working in Qatar.
“What a wonderful opportunity to go full circle from being a registered nurse to now being a dean,” said Johnson, “and the first Black dean in the Maritimes.”
Johnson said the new Sackville space is “very amenable to everything we need.” In addition to clinical placements that sometimes bring students to work at the Sackville hospital, students also add to the vibrancy of the shared spaces at the hospital, said Johnson.
“When they want some downtime in between class and lab, they’ll go in the atrium and they’ll relax in there,” said Johnson, which encourages patients to also use the space.
More nurses trained, more staying in NB
Kiera Wood and Tia Richard started online studies with Beal in the summer of 2023, and are due to graduate this December. Wood says she appreciated moving to in-person learning after spending 12 months online. “It made it a little bit easier to learn with the hands on aspects of nursing and being able to do our labs and clinicals,” says Wood.
Richard says the new location is welcome after studying for several months in Beal’s temporary digs in Moncton. Though she’s happy Beal was able to find a way not to delay her graduation, she says that “coming here was kind of like, okay, this is where we wanted to be… Our state of the art facilities, and our classrooms, and a place to kind of settle a bit better, versus being in a place that wasn’t meant for us.”
The facilities in the Sackville hospital include a virtual reality suite, where students don VR headsets and interact with imaginary patients whose responses are controlled by instructors in an attached observation room. It also includes a large number of hospital beds equipped with patient mannequins representing various ages and ailments, and a traditional classroom space for group instruction.
Some Beal students will return to their home provinces to work after graduation, but others, like Richard, have plans to stay local. With a grandmother who served as a nurse at the Sackville Memorial Hospital, she’s even hoping to work some shifts in Sackville.
Ronak Vaghasiya also plans to stay in New Brunswick. He’s a former international student and now permanent resident who aims to eventually train as a nurse practitioner. That should be well within his grasp, since Vaghasiya worked for two years as an ER doctor in India. But after finding the pathway to practicing as a physician in Canada long and competitive, Vaghasiya decided to retrain, this time as a nurse, and eventually NP.
Health minister John Dornan told reporters that the Beal program is part of a larger push to increase nursing student seats in the province which he says have doubled in the past year.
