The economic crisis has drawn strong interest in the nursing profession, as evidenced by the record number to attend White Plains Hospital Center”™s third annual “Nursing College and Career Day” on Jan. 24.
About 75 high school and college students, as well as individuals seeking career change, met with counselors from local nursing schools for information and guidance.
“We, like every other hospital, are experiencing a nursing shortage, and we”™re working on a local level to help with a national problem,” said program director Monica Purdy, who serves as the nursing liaison to nurse apprentices.
Purdy said the nursing shortage was evident before the economic crisis. The nurse apprenticeship program was created to entice young students into nursing.
Program director Annie Norris said the program started in 2006 with a $300,000 federal grant.
Norris said the Nursing College and Career day is a community outreach component of the program, which also incorporates regular training sessions on topics like performing CPR and checking vital signs as well as the nurse apprenticeship program that brings students in to learn and to work with nurses at the hospital.
Nursing has resurfaced as a very viable career, especially in tough economic times, Purdy said.
“Every hospital is facing some kind of financial crunch, but you”™re always going to need health care workers,” Purdy said.
Purdy said some of the factors that led to the nursing shortage include the aging nursing population and newer students just out of college passing over nursing as a career choice.
But that is rapidly changing as nursing is becoming popular again, and there”™s room for professional growth in the field. Norris said the average annual starting salary for a nurse is $60,000 and “in a short amount of time they can rise up the ladder and eventually they could become administrators of the hospital.”
“Conditions have changed, also,” Norris said. “I think people have realized the impact that nurses make on patients is worth everything that they maybe didn”™t realize years ago.
People are not only appreciating nurses more, but they”™re looking into a field that they want to partake in and make a difference in the world.”
Norris said of the Nursing College and Career Day attendees, 50 percent were high school students, 10 percent college students and the remainder second career candidates.
One of the early apprentices is now on staff as a registered nurse at the hospital.
“That”™s the goal of the whole program,” Purdy said. “The whole goal is for all these apprentices to come of age and come back to us each summer and eventually graduate from the nursing college, pass the certification exam and then come back and work at White Plains Hospital.”
Purdy said graduation from the seven-week nurse apprenticeship summer program is always a moment of truth for the students.
“There are very few people that don”™t have tears in their eyes at graduation,” Purdy said. “They realize what a difference the program has made. When they come out, they”™ve dealt with death and birth. The experiences they get are unbelievable, and we”™re fortunate to have a hospital like this that is so supportive of the program.”Â
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, nursing is the nation’s largest health care profession, with more than 2.9 million registered nurses nationwide. Of all licensed RNs, 2.42 million, or 83.2 percent, are employed in nursing.
The shortage of registered nurses in the U.S. could reach as high as 500,000 by 2025, according to a report released in March 2008 by Dr. Peter Buerhaus of Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, Dr. Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth University and Dr. David Auerbach of the Congressional Budget Office. The report found that the demand for RNs is expected to grow by 2 to 3 percent each year.
For more information on the nursing apprenticeship program, visit    www.wphospital.org.
