A trip to the hospital can be a frightening and confusing experience, but it is often the care and patience of doctors and nurses that ease a patient’s mind. When Keiser University Daytona student Keara Ehrhart was having complications during her second pregnancy, she felt that she wasn’t given the care and sympathy that she had hoped to receive. But, from Ehrhart’s negative experiences with labor and delivery nurses, an idea was born – become a nurse, herself.

“I thought, if I can go to school and I can make a difference for somebody, at least just one person, then that can change their whole entire outlook,” Ehrhart said.

At thirty-four years old, and with three children at home, Ehrhart decided that she was done working in the billing department of a medical facility and instead wanted a career where she could help people in a way that she had been deprived.

Her dream is to one day work on the pediatric floor of a hospital, and thanks to her Associate of Science degree in Nursing from Keiser University, she will soon have that chance.

Keiser University’s Associate of Science degree in Nursing prepares students to practice professional nursing. Professional nursing involves the performance of those acts requiring substantial specialized knowledge, judgment and nursing skill based upon applied principles of biological, physical, and psychological and social sciences

Ehrhart discovered Keiser University through mutual friends who spoke highly of the university’s nursing degree programs. Now, nearly completing her degree, Ehrhart said she can attest to the school’s student-first philosophy. She gushed about the attentiveness and understanding of her professors, saying they understood that besides being a student she was also a mother and wife with a job.

While attending her practicum sessions with Keiser University at a local hospital, Ehrhart said that patients would comment on the outstanding job of the Keiser nursing students.

She also said that she highly recommends the program to anybody considering getting into the healthcare field and has already referred many colleagues to the school.

Keiser University is a private, independent, non-profit university serving nearly 20,000 students at 21 Florida campuses, online, and two international sites. Co-founded in 1977 by Chancellor Arthur Keiser, Ph.D., and Evelyn Keiser, Keiser University currently offers more than 100 degrees from associates to the doctoral level. Keiser University is a member of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and was ranked No. 11 in the U.S. in Social Mobility by U.S. News and World Reports in 2021.