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LOCAL SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM AIMS TO EASE NURSING SHORTAGE-THE DAILY PROGRESS, SEPTEMBER 3, 2007

Posted: Wednesday September 5, 2007

Local Scholarship Program Aims to Ease Nursing Shortage

By Tasha Kates / tkates@dailyprogress.com | 978-7267
September 3, 2007

When Samantha Houchens was a little girl, she already had a handle on her career path.

“I wanted to be a nurse,” Houchens said. “Some of my family members have been in and out of a hospital for my entire life and I saw how a good nurse could make a difference.”

After graduating high school, the Albemarle County resident spent time at Shenandoah University before coming back home to continue her education at Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Now 20, Houchens is a year away from her childhood goal of being a registered nurse with the help of her employer, the University of Virginia Medical Center. The post-anesthesia care unit patient care technician will receive up to $3,000 a semester from the center’s new scholarship program to complete her nursing education.

Houchens is one of 18 hospital employees who have been offered the scholarship this year. The scholarship was started to encourage employees to get a nursing degree or take their nursing education to the next step.

The program is the brainchild of a UVa Health System task force looking at nurse retention, said Tricia Van Hook, human resources programs manager for the health system.

“It was one of the recommendations put forward that put forth scholarships for nursing and [to] increase funds for professional development,” Van Hook said. “We benefit anytime we have additional nurses we’re able to home grow. It was a no-brainer.”

The medical center’s new program is one of the ways it is responding to a nursing shortage that extends worldwide. Not only do aging baby boomers require more care, the country’s most experienced baby boomer nurses are retiring, said Heidi Malez, employment director for the UVa Health System and an RN herself.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, nursing schools turned away more than 41,683 qualified applicants to baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2005 because of a shortage of faculty, space and budget limitations.

UVa had been trying to recruit the next generation of nurses long before the scholarship program was announced last spring. The medical center offers tuition waiver and reimbursement programs to its employees. Current employees who refer RNs who get hired by the medical center are eligible for up to $5,000 in referral bonuses depending on the RN’s expertise. Scholarship recipients are still eligible for all of those programs.

While only 18 employees applied for the scholarship this year, Van Hook said the university would have paid for more. She declined to reveal just how much money or how many scholarships the medical center could have given out this year.

This year’s scholarship class is made up of eight nurses and 10 employees in patient care and other support positions. Two of them are pursuing a master’s degree, seven are pursuing a bachelor’s degree and nine are pursuing an associate’s degree. Eight of those who want to become registered nurses will get their degrees at PVCC.

A few of the scholarship recipients are using the money to facilitate a complete career change. Paula Stucker, 42, is an administrative assistant in the bed coordination center at the medical center.

“It’s just something that has always been of interest to me,” Stucker, a second-year nursing student at PVCC, said. “I’ve wanted to be an RN since I was in middle school.”

Stucker, who was inspired to become a nurse after a hospital stay when she was 13, wasn’t able to start her nursing education right away because she needed to work full time to support her family. After a series of discussions with her husband, Stucker finally started school a couple of years ago.

Coordinating an education, job and family responsibilities isn’t easy. Stucker goes to school during the day and works at the medical center on weekend nights.

“Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming,” Stucker said. “My family understands right now that getting through school will help us do other things later, like pay for my children’s college education.”

Van Hook said most of the scholarship recipients had already made the decision to get a nursing degree. Some of them, like Houchens and Stucker, had already started their education.

In order to stay in the scholarship program, Houchens and Stucker will have to keep a 3.0 GPA, take at least two classes a semester and graduate in three years, all while still working for UVa.

Van Hook said the response to the program has been overwhelmingly positive. She said she hopes the program will be return in April.

“There is certainly a strong likelihood it will continue in future years, especially since how strongly the program was received,” Van Hook said.

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LOCAL SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM AIMS TO EASE NURSING SHORTAGE-THE DAILY PROGRESS, SEPTEMBER 3, 2007

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