Alumna Collaborates to Transform Health Care

As Methodist Mansfield Medical Center’s vice president of nursing and chief nursing officer, Nora Frasier, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FACHE, (Nursing ’18) is constantly challenged to keep a qualified nursing staff. There is a nursing shortage nationwide, but closer to home, the city of Mansfield’s population is increasing exponentially; projections are the population will reach 150,000 by 2022. Methodist Mansfield has almost doubled bed capacity from 168 to 262 in the last seven years. Additionally, the health system recently opened a second acute care hospital in Midlothian, 11 miles northwest via U.S. Highway 287, with 44 beds and the capacity to expand to 80.

When Frasier began her advanced nursing degree at TTUHSC two years ago, she experienced the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon — a sudden awareness of encountering something with which you notice as familiar. (Like when you buy a white car and then seemingly see more white cars than you did before.) Frasier began to take notice of the Double T’s proudly displayed on vehicles in Mansfield Methodist’s parking lot and throughout the city. She thought, Why don’t we grow our own nurse workforce?

The idea to bring TTUHSC to Mansfield came to life as a conversation between Frasier and TTUHSC School of Nursing Dean Michael Evans, PhD, RN, FAAN, following her DNP capstone presentation. “I thought it was a way to give back to a university that helped me with my education and also to address a critical need for our community,” Frasier said.

Over the last three years, Evans and the school’s executive leadership worked collaboratively with Frasier, Methodist Mansfield and the city of Mansfield leaders— at their request — to expand our Traditional BSN program onsite at Methodist Mansfield.

Now Frasier eagerly awaits the first class of future Red Raider nurses who will join her at Methodist Mansfield this fall. But more importantly, she’s banking on them joining the hospital’s workforce after graduating and transforming health care for residents in Mansfield — and across Texas — now and in the years to come.