DRYDEN – Filling the nursing gap, one nurse at a time – or 10.
Tompkins Cortland Community College was awarded $175,000 in state funding to advance its health care and mental health needs, said Peter Voorhees, TC3 public information officer.
From the funding, $100,000 will go toward student’s mental health needs and $75,000 will go toward the nursing program to add a second simulation room.
That will help the college train 10 more students to graduate from the school’s nursing program each spring semester; mostly licensed practical nurses coming back to school to become a registered nurse, Voorhees said.
LPNs can now skip their first semester of the RN program, said Nursing Program Chair Kim Sharpe. In the first semester of TC3’s nursing program, they would be learning what they have already learned during their 18-month LPN program.
“The hospitals continue to tell us at TC3 that they need more nurses,” Sharpe said. “Typically, we graduate about 60 from our day program. Now, this’ll increase it by 10, which will be good for the local hospitals and employers that are desperate for nurses.”
The number of applications from LPNs has risen in the past few years, too many to accommodate in the program.
“With LPNs, it’s kind of been like a pendulum,” Sharpe said. “Hospitals, 20 years ago, used a lot of LPNs. Then, it kind of swung where most LPNs were being employed in doctor’s offices or long-term care, but now, the pendulum has swung back, so hospitals are hiring LPNs.”
Guthrie, like many healthcare organizations nationwide, has felt the effects of an ongoing nursing shortage, said Kansas Underwood, Guthrie’s chief nursing officer and vice president of operations.
The Health Resources and Services Administration projected in November 2022 that the United States would face a shortage of 78,610 full-time RNs this year and a shortage of 63,720 full-time RNs in 2030.
Partnering with local colleges, including TC3, has been crucial during the nursing shortage, Underwood said. Through clinical placements, mentorship programs and scholarship opportunities, students have been able to transition from the classroom to a clinical environment.
“These partnerships not only help to fill critical staffing needs, but also allow us to cultivate a pipeline of skilled, compassionate nurses who are familiar with our culture and standards of excellence,” Underwood said.
Five years ago, TC3 also added an evening nursing program, which graduates 30 nurses every other December, Sharpe said.
“We really have grown our program in response to the need,” Sharpe said.
New York State’s 30 community colleges received $8 million in recurring annual funding, $5 million of which will be used by schools to invest in health care programs to increase enrollment, the release from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office says.
“This investment in our community colleges is another massive step to building the best public education institution in the country, meeting the needs of our students to succeed in high demand jobs across our state,” Hochul said in the news release.
About 70% to 80% of TC3 health care graduates end up working in Cortland, Tompkins, Onondaga or Broome counties, Sharpe said.
“While we acknowledge the challenges we face, we are optimistic about the future,” Underwood said. “We will continue to invest in our nursing workforce, strengthen our educational partnerships, and explore innovative solutions to address staffing challenges.”
The rest of the $75,000 will go toward building a second simulation room, so two simulations can be run at once, Voorhees said.
The simulation lab has students working in small groups to care for a patient that is being controlled by a faculty member, Sharpe said. Depending on what the students do, the patient gets worse or better. It can even simulate a birth.
“The state said. ‘We’d really like you to increase your nursing program’s size, tell us what you would need financially to do that,’ and we said ‘We would need this second simulation room, and an extra faculty member to teach those 10 in the faculty and in the lab,” Sharpe said.
A part-time faculty member was hired with the state funds.
Officials are still deciding how to spend the $100,000 for students’ mental health needs, Voorhees said.
