Fayetteville State University’s School of Nursing has been approved by the University of North Carolina System to offer a master’s degree in nursing in patient quality and safety. The new program will enroll its first students this coming fall.
Experts have calculated that medical errors are the cause of more than 250,000 deaths per year in the United States. The importance of implementing quality improvement and patient safety education into academic curricula has been emphasized by medical and nursing organizations.
“This program is timely and relevant for the area,” said Dr. Afua Arhin, interim dean of the College of Health, Science, and Technology at Fayetteville State University. “All hospital systems provided strong letters of support and some administrators went as far as saying that they would hire every graduate to help support their quality improvement efforts.”
Dr Arhin is a graduate of the University of Ghana in Africa. She earned a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D. at the University of Florida.
