---

RNIP, a specialty nurse internship program offered at Campbell County Memorial Hospital in the northeast corner of Wyoming. This region is classified as rural to frontier: less than 10 persons per square mile. There are very few nurses, especially special care nurses. It is difficult to recruit nurses to move to this area. Currently, the most profound nursing shortages and most of the agency staffing costs are for the specialty areas. At Campbell County Memorial Hospital we found it easier to develop our own staff, rather than attempt to recruit people to move to NE Wyoming. 7 independent hospitals; 3 full service, 4 critical access, are working together to improve patient care through training of specialty nurses for acute care, rural hospitals.

The Rural Nurse Internship Program (RNIP) is designed to train new graduate RNs and experienced nurses who would like to move into specialty areas. The RNIP program provides training in 9 specialty-nursing areas: ICU/CCU, OB, OR/OSTS-PACU, Medical Surgical, Diabetes Education, Dialysis and Oncology, Mental Health and Emergency Care nursing. Classes began January 2004, RNIP currently offers 16 weeks of precepted clinical experience and a total of 84 hours of classroom based education based on the national certification exams. The classroom courses were developed by clinical nurses and are now being moved to an "on-line' format to better meet the needs of the nurses from other hospitals and to contain costs for instructor time.

CCMH received a HRSA grant to develop the education and clinical internship portion of the RNIP. The hospitals all agreed to fund the cost of training and reimbursing preceptors on each unit.

To date the internship program has graduated 19 special care nurses and has moved the didactic classes for 5.5 specialty areas to the on-line format.