UALR teams with hospital to add nurses

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is partnering with CHI St. Vincent to enroll 40 nursing students a year into an accelerated program that will end with employment at the health system.

The three-year agreement announced Thursday will financially help students in the Pathway Program, expand the university’s student capacity in the department of nursing and fill the staffing needs at St. Vincent facilities. Currently, central Arkansas has more than 700 empty nursing positions, and industry officials expect the number to grow in the coming years, said Chad Aduddell, the hospital’s CEO.

“Our baby boomers are aging, and so is our nursing workforce,” he said. “One study says that 55 percent of the nurse workforce is 50 or older, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the shortage will only get worse: we’ll need 16 percent more nurses over the next seven to eight years. This problem is particularly acute in Arkansas where we are one of the top 10 states with the highest demand for additional nurses.”

Coupled with an aging workforce, the nursing shortage also is affected by school enrollment not outpacing the demand, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. That is in part because there aren’t enough nursing instructors, the association said.

To teach in the field, a nurse must have at least a master’s degree or be enrolled in a master’s degree program, said Ann Bain, UALR’s dean of the College of Education and Health Professions. More than half of the working nurses now hold associate degrees, said Preston Molsbee, the chairman of UALR’s nursing department. Universities also need to have competitive salaries for nurses to teach, he said.

Under the partnership, the hospital will donate $333,333 a year through the remainder of the agreement. That money will help the university add at least three more faculty members to the current 22-person department, Molsbee said.

The first group of 40 students will start this fall with tuition-only scholarships — $1,250 per semester each. UALR expects those students to graduate in December 2018 with associate of applied science degrees. The students will be required to work at St. Vincent facilities for at least two years for the scholarship amounts to be forgiven.

“Our goal is for them to graduate with no student debt,” UALR Chancellor Andrew Rogerson said.

A student who wants to be a part of the program must have finished all general-education courses with at least a 2.6 grade-point average and have a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0.