Part of a new nurse training initiative that came under fire last month has received state regulatory approval for one year, while a decision on another portion has been delayed.

The state Board of Nursing on Thursday gave four North Dakota colleges the go-ahead to begin training students this fall in a licensed practical nursing program. A decision on the registered nurse training portion of the Dakota Nursing Program will not be made until September.

The colleges requested the delay, said Constance Kalanek, director of the nursing board, which licenses nurses and approves nursing education programs.

"We want to make sure that what we give to our students and the people of North Dakota is the best quality that we can," said Drake Carter, associate vice president for academic affairs at Bismarck State College.

Bismarck State, Williston State, Minot State-Bottineau and Lake Region State are part of a consortium that plans to begin offering a certificate in licensed practical nursing and an associate degree in registered nursing. The goal is to help deal with a shortage of nurses.

Last month, reviewers from the nursing board said the Dakota Nursing Program was far short of meeting state standards and did not deserve state regulatory approval because it would not prepare students to pass their licensing exam or provide adequate medical care.

Kalanek said Thursday that the board worked with college administrators over the past month to fix problems.

"It assisted them in making the changes that were necessary for the (LPN) program to meet the minimum standards for initial approval," she said. "The curriculum now does meet the standard for practical nursing."

More than 80 students are expected to enroll in the program this fall, Kalanek said. The program will be reviewed in one year. An interim report is due in January.

The nursing board said there still are problems with the registered nurse curriculum.

"The course descriptions didn't match the course outcomes. The topical outlines didn't meet the course objectives," said Linda Shanta, the board's associate director for education.

"We focused our energy in the last three weeks … on helping the Dakota Nursing Program get their practical nurse program up and running, and we really haven't had opportunity to really re-address the associate degree program," she said.

Carter said the delay in board consideration for the registered nurse program will not affect the planned startup of that portion of the program in fall 2005.

State lawmakers last year overhauled a law that had made North Dakota the only state to require registered nurses to have four-year degrees. The requirement is now two years.

D'Arlyn Bauer, director of the nursing program at Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, said the development of nurse training curriculums "is a real complex phenomenon."

"You don't just pull courses out of a hat," she said. "You have to have a cohesive plan."

Sitting Bull College is not part of the consortium, but the school has approval from the nursing board for its program offering an associate degree in practical nursing. The program expects to enroll more than two dozen students in the coming year.

North Dakota has a shortage of about 500 registered nurses and 200 licensed practical nurses, and the situation will worsen in coming years, the board said.

A study commissioned by the board and done by the University of North Dakota's Center for Rural Health concluded that several measures are needed to improve the nursing climate in the state. They include increasing salaries, giving nurses more say in decision-making, and increasing recruitment efforts and education programs.

Sharon Moos, administrator of the North Dakota Nurses Association, said the state must do more than train nurses "for export." Entry-level nurses must be given reasons to want to stay in the state, she said.