DAYTON — Major health-care employers are requiring more education of their nurses, a trend that has prompted two local colleges to discontinue their associate degree programs for the profession.

Kettering College — part of Kettering Health Network — on Monday will begin its three-year, year-round bachelor of science in nursing program, enrolling up to 90 students. Miami University, which trains nurses at regional campuses in Butler and Warren counties, also is ending its two-year nursing degree and concentrating on four-year and bachelor’s degree completion programs.

Paulette Worcester, chair of Miami’s nursing department, said better patient outcomes are at the center of the growing preference for better-educated nurses.

“It is really happening at every level, but our hospital partners are finding patients fare better, there are fewer complications, and length of stay is shorter when a bachelor’s-degreed nurse (is) at the bedside,” Worcester said.

The shift has implications for one of the region and the state’s most popular types of higher education that enrolled nearly 30,000 students in 2009, according to the most recent Ohio Board of Nursing data. The demand for all types of nurses is expected to grow in coming years as older professionals begin to retire while new students often face waiting lists of up to two years because of a shortage of educators and clinical training sites.

“The whole profession of nursing has been gravitating toward the bachelor degree to be the entry to practice,” said Cherie Rebar, associate director of nursing programs at Kettering College.

The college — formerly known as the Kettering College of Medical Arts — will start its last two classes of nurses in its five-semester nursing associate degree program during the upcoming fall and winter semesters; Miami will award its last associate degrees in nursing in May 2012. The first class of BSN nurses will graduate from Kettering in July 2014.

In the past two years, Ohio hospitals have placed a greater emphasis on hiring nurses with bachelor degrees, said Gingy Harshey-Meade, chief executive officer of the Ohio Nurses Association.

Discussions have begun about passing a state law by 2015 that would require nurses to obtain a bachelor’s degree in nursing within 10 years.

Some local hospitals already have such requirements. A year ago, for example, Kettering Health Network began requiring its new nursing hires with associate degrees to obtain a bachelor’s degree in nursing within five years, said Brenda Kuhn, KHN’s chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services at Kettering Medical Center.

Miami Valley Hospital, like Kettering Health Network, continues to hire nurses with associate degrees, and hasn’t begun requiring that they obtain a bachelor’s degree in nursing within a certain period of time, said Jayne Lachey Gmeiner, director of Miami Valley Hospital’s Center of Nursing Excellence. It’s evaluating such a requirement, but hasn’t yet made a decision, she said.

At Miami Valley, 54 percent to 56 percent of the hospital’s 2,300 nurses now have bachelor degrees, up from 52 percent two years ago, Gmeiner said.

Hospitals are also requiring more education of their nurses as part of efforts to achieve coveted MAGNET status, a benchmark of nursing excellence, Rebar said. Locally, Miami Valley and Good Samaritan hospitals — both part of Premier Health Partners — are MAGNET hospitals.

A nurse’s level of education is not the lone — and often not the primary — factor considered in hiring. Local hospitals have recently begun to place more emphasis on a nurse’s experience, for example.

In the Dayton/Cincinnati region, staff registered nurses earn an average pay of $27.67 per hour, excluding shift, weekend and holiday differentials, according to the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association.

The number of nursing bachelor’s degrees awarded has increased 45 percent, from 1,768 in 2005 to 2,568 in 2009, according to state data. But associate degrees have also leapt 80 percent with 2,656 awarded in 2005 and 4,781 awarded in 2009.

Those statistics coupled with the affordability and popularity of two-year registered nursing degrees have officials from Sinclair and Clark State community colleges confident their programs will remain viable even if the market dictates more education for nurses.

Marcia Miller, head of nursing at Sinclair, said her program will be “alive and well” thanks to partnerships with schools like Wright State University where many of Sinclair’s nursing graduates go one to earn a bachelor’s degree.

With more than 450 students enrolled and a waiting list of two years, Sinclair has one of the most popular nursing programs in the region. Half of its graduates go directly into the work force, another 26 percent immediately continue their education and 18 percent both work and attend school, Miller said.

Miller is part of a committee discussing the possible statewide regulation for nurses to earn a bachelor’s degree within 10 years and doesn’t see the move as a threat to her two-year program.

“The intent is not to eradicate the two-year degree,” Miller said. “To think that anyone can go through life without getting more education, too much changes in the medical field. I don’t think it will affect us at all.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7457 or bsutherly@DaytonDailyNews.com.