Thus far, the council has seven recommendations to apply to the state’s nursing curriculum of Michigan, one of them being the development of nursing education in a more connected and coherent format, Mundt said.

“There hadn’t been one frame that was really overseeing and really looking at nursing education in a central way,” Mundt said. “We’re making recommendations for implementation at a broader level.”

Mundt and her fellow co-chair, Margie Clark, dean of Health and Human Services Division at Lansing Community College, said she worked with Mundt to get input from nursing leaders across the state.

“We worked very hard with nursing leaders and representatives from other health professional and health arms because we needed to get … a panoramic input from other folks within that work with nurses, have contact with nursing and the profession in their role for caring for patients and families,” Clark said.

Some nurses, such as MSU alumnus Chien Chen who works at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, think the new recommendations — which include transitional programs across the state to help new graduates adjust successfully into a hospital setting — would be a great benefit.

“Well, it’s going to help in terms of what new nurses have to learn and adapt to in the field of actual hospital life,” Chen said. “When you’re thrown out into the actual hospital setting, it’s sort of overwhelming. We’re taught to do a lot of the hands-on stuff and theory stuff, but it’s still different when you’re actually dealing with patients.”

University of Michigan nursing junior Kaysie Erickson thinks the council’s recommendations eventually will be a good idea for new nurses, but will take a few years before Michigan nurses and hospitals catch a hold of the curriculum’s new standards.

“For the future, for incoming nursing classes, you’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth,” Erickson said. “You’ll be learning at a more national level instead of, ‘This is the way my school is going to teach me,’ but more so of how just (one group of students) is learning. Eventually, it would be really cool to see how this rolls around into the hospitals.”

The council’s first meeting was held in May, and Clark is very proud of the progress it has attained and plans to gain in the future.

“Our work is really reflective of national work and I feel like we’re on the right track,” Clark said.