Elms College to Host White-coat Ceremony for DNP Students on Dec. 5

CHICOPEE — The Elms College School of Nursing will host a white-coat ceremony on Wednesday, Dec. 5 at 6 p.m. to honor the college’s fourth cohort of DNP (doctor of nursing practice) students as they transition from the classroom into clinical practice experiences. The 15 honorees started in the DNP program in the fall of 2017. The ceremony will be held in Veritas Auditorium in Berchmans Hall.

“This ceremony is an important tradition that formally recognizes nurse-practitioner students as having mastered the knowledge and core skills to transition into mentored clinical practice settings, and into their advanced nursing specialty courses,” said Teresa Kuta Reske, director of the DNP program at Elms College.

The ceremony will include opening remarks from Kathleen Scoble, dean of the School of Nursing, as well as an oath, a blessing of the white coats, and the presentation of the coats to the students. The keynote speaker will be Br. Michael Duffy, conventual Franciscan friar and associate dean of the School of Nursing.

The DNP degree is a clinical practice doctorate. Students also take advanced specialty courses to become nurse practitioners. Elms College’s DNP graduates will be eligible to take the advanced certification examination in one of the two specialty tracks: family nurse practitioner or adult gerontology acute-care nurse practitioner. Qualified master’s-prepared nurses who are advanced-practice nurses or nurse leaders are eligible to apply to a third DNP track: health systems innovation and leadership.

“We are proud that 100{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of our NP graduates are achieving board certification and are filling critical NP positions in Western Massachusetts,” Scoble said. “We are confident that this is yet another cohort of NPs that will be well-prepared to contribute to the much-needed advanced-practice workforce of the future.”