Palo Alto College gets OK for public nursing program
“We’re going to start prepping our community right now to get nurses into the hospitals, clinics and ready to serve our South Side community.”
Palo Alto College President Robert Garza
A new nursing program is coming to the far South Side with the hopes of breaking down barriers for aspiring medical professionals in a community with limited access to health care.
The Texas Board of Nursing has approved Palo Alto College’s new associate degree program, marking the “first public nursing program on the South Side of San Antonio,” according to a news release from the Alamo Colleges District.
“The South Side is considered a health care desert,” Palo Alto College President Robert Garza said in a statement. “This means that there’s really no access or affordable access to healthcare in the area.”
Palo Alto College previously only offered a prenursing biology major. Its new two-year nursing program will lead to an associate of applied science degree that will qualify students for board exams to become registered nurses.
According to the Texas Center for Nursing Workforce Studies, the estimated demand for registered nurses within the next seven years will exceed the supply by nearly 20%.
Palo Alto’s comprehensive curriculum will combine rigorous academic coursework with practical clinical experience to produce nursing professionals to plug the gaps in San Antonio’s health care landscape. Specialties will include medical surgery, geriatric, maternal newborn, pediatric and mental health nursing.
The South Side program will be based out of the Southside Education and Training Center, a $23 million facility on land provided by the Southside Independent School District. The building, known as SETC, opened in August about 10 miles southeast of the Palo Alto campus at 1760 Martinez-losoya Road.
The 48,915-square-foot facility includes state-ofthe-art laboratories, a high-fidelity simulation lab and wards that mimic hospital settings to provide hands-on practice for students.
“It’s important for students to come in and see a variety of simulations to parallel what they’ll see out in the public,” Donna Wallis, the nursing program’s director, previously told the San Antonio Express-news. “To increase confidence in nursing students, we practice here first in a lab to build those skills, so they can interact with people and do it with integrity, care and compassion.”
The program’s official approval comes months after University Health began site work on a 68-acre parcel that will become a full-service hospital on the South Side.
The University Health Palo Alto Hospital is expected to open in 2027 and will help to fulfill the goal of ensuring residents have access to high-quality health care closer to their homes. Students in the nursing program will have the opportunity to complete clinical rotations at the new neighborhood hospital once it is complete.
“We’re really excited about our partnership with University Health and the Palo Alto Hospital that will be here on the South Side but that’s still a few years away,” Garza said in the news release. “And so we’re going to start prepping our community right now to get nurses into the hospitals, clinics and ready to serve our South Side community.”
Palo Alto College will begin accepting applications in the spring. The top 30 applicants will be selected for the first cohort, which is expected to begin in fall 2024. For more information on the program, visit the Alamo Colleges District’s website.