ABSTRACT
Further details about the course development are described in a previous article (Karvonen, Sayre, & Wyant, 2004). In 2005, in collaboration with the continuing nursing education department of the University
60 of Washington School of Nursing, the course was expanded to include six sites from Washington and Alaska via videoconferencing. A total of 146 participants from all the sites were enrolled in the course. One hundred nineteen (82%) successfully completed the
65 course. Participating sites were facilitated by an agency coordinator. Agency coordinators are educators and certified nurses who received additional training from the course planners. The agency coordinators meet for a full-day training session annually. One of the topics
70 discussed is mentoring or coaching. For the purposes of this program, mentoring is understood to be a timelimited relationship wherein the coordinator assists the participant to identify potential barriers to success and collaborates with the participant in making a plan to
75 address the barriers. Both the agency coordinator workshop and the medical-surgical certification and practice review course were supported in part by funds from a training grant from the Division of Nursing, Bureau of Health Professions, Health Resources and
The national certification examination pass rate for participants from the 2005 medical-surgical certification and practice review course was 86%. Statistics
85 provided by the ANCC demonstrate a national pass rate of 71.7% for all baccalaureate-level and higherlevel specialty examinations combined and 64.6% for all diploma-and associate-degree-level specialty examinations combined. Statistics were not available
90 from the Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses. Anonymous demographic data were collected from the course participants on the first day of class. The collected demographic data are summarized in Table 2.
