BY ANDREAS YILMA
CITIZENS NEWS
NAUGATUCK – Griffin Hospital School of Allied Health Careers has begun its teach-out program for some former Stone Academy students, but the school is still looking to reach out to the remaining students.
Stone Academy closed without warning in February 2023, leaving 800 students at its campuses in Waterbury, West Haven and East Hartford in the lurch. An audit paid for by the state found substantial problems with the education provided by Stone Academy, including 76% of clinical hours missing proper documentation and more than a quarter of classes taught by unqualified staff.
The Naugatuck campus of its School of Allied Health Careers opened on Dec. 11 at 1186 New Haven Road but began its first day of a 10-month Licensed Practical Nurse teach-out-program for former Stone Academy students on April 15. The new center is an expansion of the school’s main location in Derby.
The state-of-the-art facility features simulation technology and an experiential learning environment to prepare students to be “the next generation of highly skilled and patient-centered caregivers.”
The teach-out-program, which is expected to be finished in mid-February, has 38 students out of about 139 former Stone Academy students who were identified as eligible by the state Office of Higher Education for the program, Griffin Hospital School of Allied Health Careers Executive Dean Dr. Amanda Bell said.
Bell said when the nursing school closed, she and Griffin Health Director of Practical Nursing Program Kayla Bennett quickly got together and put together the program.
“That teach-out program is a combination of classroom with case studies, simulation, silks lab and then in addition, they have a clinical component,” Bell said. “Many of their didactic classes were taught my unqualified professionals and they did not receive any clinical experiences so they did not work with live people. There was no contact.”
Griffin Health Services Communication Specialist Christian Meagher said the state said they would pay to have Griffin Health finish the education for these students.
“There’s about 100 students up there that could finish out their education, for whatever reason, we’re not hearing from them so we’re really hoping for this article to inspire them,” Meagher said.
Bell said these students are essentially starting from the beginning as their education at Stone Academy was lacking.
“It’s really heartbreaking that their schooling was really just cut short abruptly without a lot of explanation and the fact that the education that they received really did not prepare them at all for real world competent and professionalism and what a nurse should be,” Bell said. “It did not prepare them well at all.”
Bennett said the students had about 370 hours each worth of transfer credits that was shifted over to the teach-out-program. For the state requirements for practical nursing programs, it’s 1500 hours where 750 of those hours have to be in the clinical portion.
The students had about half of their didactic and none of their clinical, Meagher said.
“When you peak in, you’ll see such an excited class because they’re very highly energized and they put their faith in us which we’re very grateful for because we can prescribe a curriculum but that other human piece you can’t and so we’re very grateful and humble that they’ve trusted us to be their educational partners to see them through the finish line,” Bell said.
Bell said Griffin Health was awarded the state contract through a formal process and now former Stone Academy students don’t have any expenses to be in the teach-out-program.
Kaitlin Little, who attended the Stone Academy East Hartford campus and is in the teach-out-program, said she initially went into the former school motivated when she first began in October of 2019 while formerly working at Hartford HealthCare before they halted her clinical portions.
“I was devastated because throughout the entire process, their communication was awful and that alone was frustrating,” said Little, who added that the former school tried to make her pay back her student loans although she wasn’t done with the program.
Subring Jacobs, a mother of five children from New York who was attending the West Haven campus, said she the moment she saw the email from Griffin, she jumped on it after a heartbreaking ordeal of only having two months left.
“One day a (Stone Academy) teacher will come and then the teacher will just stop abruptly and I’m like, there’s no way a professional nurse would just not go. Something is up with the school. It’s not the teachers,” Jacbos said. “The teachers would just stop coming just abruptly, just like that. It’s like they knew something that they couldn’t talk about.”
Little and Jacbos were both thankful for another opportunity for their LPN careers with the teach-out program.
Former Stone Academy students can contact Griffin Health for its teach-out-program through several ways including Pnprogram@griffinhealth.org, 203-732-1276 and on their website griffinhealth.org/school.
“It’s very crucial. Nobody knows more than us about this nursing shortage crisis that the nation is going through and that there are so many places that LPNs can work from doctor offices to hospitals to long term care to rehab. There’s just a plethora home care, insurance companies,” Bennet said. “There’s a plethora of places that are looking for nurses and it’s just really exciting that we get to offer this program to help them reach their goals.”
Bell said there weren’t many institutions or organizations that were raising their hands to help the students however Griffin Health didn’t hesitate.
“It was the right thing to do, especially in the time of when we’re experiencing a critical shortage for nurses and with the population that we’re serving,” Bell said. “These patients are older, they have more chronic disease and so you have a mismatch of an elderly population that really need competent and compassionate nurses and we have a pipeline that was just severed with Stone Academy closure.”
