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SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- A joint nursing program being offered by Le Moyne College and St. Joseph's Hospital in Syracuse is being used as a model to launch an effort across New York State to increase the knowledge base of nurses.

Armed with a grant of $300,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, officials from the college and hospital are hoping to replicate their program in areas across the state.

The program, which includes two years of study at Le Moyne and two years at St. Joseph's School of Nursing, produces graduates who enter nursing at the bachelor degree level. That became important after a study issued seven years ago.

"Actually looking at 28,000 surgical patients and found that the mortality rate among those patients was lower, the higher the ratio of bachelor-prepared nurses in hospitals," said Susan Bastable, Le Moyne College Nursing Program Chair.

The goal of the Institute of Medicine is to have 80 percent of all nurses trained at the bachelor degree level by 2020.