UIW program helping to fill urgent need for nurses
Some jobs are more than a way to earn a living. To those of us who have been on the front lines as lead members of a health care team, or as providers of comfort and care to individual patients and their loved ones, we know nursing is not only a profession, but a calling.
Never has that been truer than the past few months, as nurses and other health care professionals have worked to tame the global pandemic that has hit Texas especially hard.
Yet, the shortage of nurses in our community is alarming. There are 1,300 open positions for registered nurses in San Antonio. What’s more, Texas ranks second only to California as the state hardest hit by the nursing crisis. By 2030, the number of unfilled registered nurse positions would swell to 60,000, based on projections of the Texas Center for Nursing Workforce
Studies.
The reasons for the shortage are well-documented. There is an aging population with increased health care needs, paralleled by a surge in nurses — about 1 million in the United States — set to reach retirement age in the next 10-15 years.
What is less clear is why there is a shortfall in an industry that rewards workers with well-paying jobs and a deep sense of personal fulfillment. Students are not shunning the profession. There are near-record numbers of people interested in filling the demand for nurses in Texas and throughout the nation.
Part of the problem rests with nursing schools; many cannot accept more students in their programs due to lack of educational space and retiring faculty.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing estimates more than 75,000 such students were turned away from college and university nursing programs in 2018 alone.
This stunning fact has propelled the University of the Incarnate Word to take action by offering a new accelerated path to nursing careers.
On Aug. 31, the university’s Ila Faye Miller School of Nursing and Health Professions welcomed its first cohort of students for the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at a new site in San Antonio.
The online program is supplemented with on-campus, handson learning, combining online simulations and real-world clinical practice at local partner hospitals and community agencies. Students learn the art and science of administering compassionate evidenced-based care. The idea is to deliver a nursing curriculum rooted in the university’s Christian principles that’s conducive to students’ learning preferences and diverse scheduling needs.
COVID-19 confirmed the dire need to place nurses in critical nursing positions as soon as possible, and to enable those with bachelor’s degrees to chart a course for a new career without starting over. The program would complement the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s 60x30TX program, designed to help 60 percent of the state’s 25-to-34-year-old residents earn a certificate or degree by 2030.
Nurses have shown themselves to be the heroes of America’s health care system during this crisis. Their professionalism underscores the urgency of increasing the pipeline of nurses for our growing health care needs.
In San Antonio, UIW endeavors to take the first steps in introducing more students to the joys of nursing, so they can work in a profession they love while addressing a shortage of professionals that our community so desperately needs.