While a new building here for the Intercollegiate College of Nursing still is three years and more than $30 million from becoming a reality, a vision for the new facility already is coming into focus.


Whats clear, says the nursing schools administrator, is that the planned facility would be equipped to train substantially more nurses than the college does now, and would have technology and laboratory capabilities not available at the schools current facility in northwest Spokane.


Theres pressure to increase the number of students, and the nursing shortage ties in with that, says Dorothy Detlor, dean of both ICN and the affiliated Washington State University College of Nursing. This facility is intended to help address that shortage.


WSU committed recently to establish a doctorate program here in nursing and will begin teaching doctoral-level classes in fall 2005. Though that program will be geared up well before the new building opens, the structure is being designed partly with such advanced studies in mind, Detlor says.


There is a growing shortage of nursing-school instructors, she says, which makes educating more nurses more difficult. The doctorate and several attributes of the new facility are expected to help fill the problematical shortage of nursing college faculty, Detlor says.


Design work currently is under way for the envisioned new nursing school, which is to be built in the Riverpoint Higher Education Park just east of downtown. The building would be situated along the north side of Trent Avenue, just south of the Health Sciences Building.


The Washington Legislature already has appropriated $3 million for pre-design and design of the building and will decide next year whether to appropriate $31.6 million to construct the facility. The project might be funded over four years, putting it on a faster track than a typical state-funded capital project, which receives funds over the course of six years, says Bob Pringle, the ICNs library director and a member of the buildings design committee.


Pringle says that if the Legislature appropriates money for construction next year as anticipated, crews could break ground on the new structure by July 2005. If that happens, the building would be completed and ready for use in fall 2007.


Whats emerging from the design process is a 92,000-square-foot structure, part of which would be six stories tall and part of which would be five stories tall, Pringle says. Integrus Architecture PS, of Spokane, is designing the building, and Spokane-based Shea-Graham Construction Inc. is the projects general contractor-construction manager.


Plans call for the new building to be on the larger end of what so far has been its envisioned range of size: between 80,000 square feet and 100,000 square feet of floor space.


Detlor says the ICN currently has 675 students, including 400 at its Spokane facility and the rest at satellite campuses in other Washington cities. Its current Spokane facility is a two-story, 60,000-square-foot structure at 2917 W. Fort George Wright, just southeast of Spokane Falls Community College.


Its new building, as currently planned, could accommodate between 700 and 800 students in Spokane, Detlor says.


In addition to being able to handle more students, the new structure would provide expanded facilities for research. The fifth floor and possibly the sixth floor of the planned building would house research interview rooms and research laboratory space, possibly including some wet-lab space.


Currently, nursing students and ICN faculty here dont have research lab space or research-data storageinstead, they keep data locked in their offices.


Most research projects at the school involve behavioral research, Detlor says. For example, in one study a nursing college professor is investigating how a diagnosis of breast cancer affects a womans quality of life. Those types of studies require only interview rooms and secure places to store data.


Some faculty members, however, are conducting lab-related clinical research, such as into whether childrens blood contains predictors of heart disease. For such studies, faculty members have to borrow wet-lab space elsewhere.


In addition to more lab space for research, large laboratories that would be set up like hospital rooms or doctors practices would be located on the buildings first floor, and the ICNs first simulation laboratory also would be installed.


A simulation laboratory would center around a computerized mannequin that could be programmed to simulate a number of medical conditions, Pringle says. For example, it could be programmed to simulate a patient who is having a heart attack. In other scenarios, students could administer medication to the mannequin, and it would respond to that medication as a patient would.


Detlor says such mannequins cost between $45,000 and $150,000, and the school is looking at mannequins at the lower end of that price range. The ICN already uses much simpler mannequinssimilar to those typically used in a cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) classin its practice labs, and will continue to do so in the expanded facility.


Those more conventional mannequins are placed in mock-up hospital settings, and students use them while practicing basic nursing tasks. Such tasks include inserting an intravenous needle into a patients arm or changing IV fluids.


The mock hospital settings include patient rooms, intensive-care units, and pediatric facilities, and include much of the actual technology found in medical centers.


The first floor of the new building also would house a peoples clinic similar to ones the nursing college operates here that provide basic health care to homeless and low-income individuals, as well as students. The college currently operates such clinics in the YMCA building downtown and also at the current ICN. Both are supported by grants and donations.


Detlor says the new clinic will be substantially larger than the clinic at the ICNs current building and would serve its regular clientele and all students on the Riverpoint campus. She says the two current clinics might be folded into the new one, but that hasnt been determined yet.


A phlebotomy lab for blood drawing, something neither of the ICNs clinics has currently, would be included at the new clinic as well.


On the second floor, the nursing college likely would have an updated, expanded production studio for making nursing-education videotapes and compact discs. Such videos are used internally and sold nationally and internationally, creating a revenue source for the ICN, Detlor says.


Classrooms, office space, and meeting rooms would take up most of the rest of the new building. Detlor says the ICN is short on all three currently.


Faculty shortage


While the new facility has received priority treatment so far from state legislators because of nursing shortages, Detlor says a new building would help the college address the faculty shortage as well.


Along with the nursing shortage, theres a very severe shortage of faculty, and that will get worse, she says. If we dont have the faculty to teach those students, we cant address the shortage.


The shortage in nursing faculty is due largely to a discrepancy in pay between nursing-school instructors and nurses with the same level of qualifications who work in the field, typically in management. In todays market, a professional with a masters degree in nursing who works as a nursing administrator would have to take a significant pay cut to become a faculty member, Detlor says.


Candidates for faculty positions often are looking for schools with some attributes that the ICN doesnt have currently. Potential faculty members often want to work toward a doctorate while instructing. Consequently, they want to work for schools where they can earn a doctorate. WSUs secured new doctorate in nursing program will help in recruiting faculty members, Detlor says.


Many faculty candidates also want to be on a centrally located campus with a broad role, and a new building at Riverpoint would help with that aspect of recruiting more than the current, relatively isolated quarters.


The current ICN building was constructed well before the Riverpoint campus was formed, Pringle says. The ICN, founded in 1968, is a consortium of four schoolsEastern Washington University, Gonzaga University, WSU, and Whitworth College. WSU acts as the coordinator and fiscal agent for the facility.


When the building was constructed in 1980, Pringle says, EWU and WSU were competing fiercely for academic programs here, and the nursing college was placed in a neutral spot so it didnt appear one school was being given preference over the other, Pringle says.


Its unclear at this time what that building will be used for after the nursing college vacates it. Pringle says the school may need to use it for other academic programs.


Also, hes heard talk that the nearby Spokane Falls Community College might want to use the structure and that the Kalispel Tribe of Indians might be interested in establishing some sort of educational facility there.