New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service is offering a new degree in nursing management, aiming to counter a nationwide nursing shortage and high rates of nurse turnover.

The Master of Science in Management – Concentration for Nurse Leadership, designed in concert with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, aims to improve the quality of nursing management and to boost nurses’ job satisfaction.

So far, 28 nurses have enrolled, including 25 from NewYork-Presbyterian, which is footing $35,000 tuition bills for each nurse who completes the program and commits to working at the hospital for two years.

Those who developed the concentration said it grew out of a growing tendency for nurse leaders to oversee various hospital operations, even those outside their scope of training.

According to a Wagner professor who spearheaded the degree concentration, Anthony Kovner, many nursing managers are chosen for leadership positions because they are good nurses, not necessarily good managers.

“There are tremendous expectations for people in these positions: financial performance, quality performance, service performance, and often they are not provided with the resources and support they need to carry out those functions,” he said.

A senior vice president and the chief nursing officer at NewYork-Presbyterian, Wilhelmina Manzano, said the changing demands in health care require new skills for nursing leaders. “When we are looking at patient safety, quality of outcomes, managing staff, improving recruitment and retention, it is really the effectiveness of the nursing leader that makes a difference,” she said.

Hospital officials said that while NewYork-Presbyterian is affiliated with both Cornell and Columbia universities, NYU’s Wagner school was the best fit for this particular program.

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NEW INSTITUTE ADDRESSES TRAUMA AMONG CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services has teamed up with Mount Sinai Medical Center to launch an institute focused on preventing and treating child trauma within foster care settings.

Supported by a $2.4 million federal grant from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, the ACS-Mount Sinai Children’s Trauma Institute aims to improve child welfare practice, and to develop techniques for dealing with trauma among children and families. “Children in child welfare systems have an extraordinary prevalence of traumatic stress disorders,” the institute’s principal investigator, and a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Mt. Sinai, Dr. Claude Chemtob, said. “This institute is going to help abused kids by shining a spotlight on trauma of children within the child welfare system nationally.”

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PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF NYC HIRES NEW DOCTORS

Planned Parenthood of New York City has hired two new doctors, doubling the physician team that staffs its three clinics in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Dr. Gillian Dean, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has been named PPNYC’s new associate medical director of clinical research and training.

Dr. Timothy Ryntz, a voluntary clinical instructor at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, will serve as PPNYC’s associate medical director of clinical services.

PPNYC serves 45,000 clients annually, the organization said.

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GALL BLADDER REMOVED VIA BELLY BUTTON

Doctors at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center have removed a patient’s gall bladder laparoscopically – through a small incision in the patient’s bellybutton.

Traditionally, even minimally invasive surgery requires several small incisions. But last week, the hospital’s director of minimally invasive surgery, Dr. Julio Teixeira, completed the operation with just one cut that measured three-quarters of an inch long. The 54-year-old patient was suffering from gallstones. For the surgery, patients are put under general anesthesia. Surgery lasts between one and three hours.

esolomont@nysun.com