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UTEP fills nursing needs. Grant will fund course,
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Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times
Two college students who may benefit from UTEP's
new fast-track nursing degree program say they want to join the
profession for personal reasons.
Javier Rodriguez, 30, and Monica Sherman 26, both
fifth-semester UTEP nursing students, said their choice of careers
was influenced by family members.
Because the nation has a severe shortage of nurses,
the health-care industry is looking for ways to motivate more
people like Rodriguez and Sherman to enter the field.
"My mother was always sick, and I wanted to
find a better way to help her at home," Rodriguez said. "I
plan to specialize in critical care nursing."
Sherman, 26, said she had a premature baby and
was so impressed by how the nurses attended the infant that she
decided to become a nurse, too. "The people who cared for
him the most, more than the doctors, were the nurses, and that's
what sparked my interest," she said.
The University of Texas at El Paso's School of
Nursing recently received a $460,000 grant from Sierra Providence
Health Network and the Tenet Healthcare Foundation for an accelerated
degree program, which health officials hope will fill the region's
critical need for nurses.
Robert Anders, associate dean of UTEP's College
of Health Sciences, said the program will begin in 2005 with summer
and wintermester courses. Eligible students include those who
have already completed a bachelor's degree in another field or
who have enough basic credit hours to qualify.
College and health-care officials said the program
is expected to attract people who want to change careers. Anders
said about 20 students will make up the first class and are likely
to graduate in 2006.
UTEP President Diana Natalicio said the cost of
hiring faculty has been one of the hurdles in offering an accelerated
degree program, but "the Tenet Foundation's funding will
help make the program a reality."
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that
about a million new registered nurses and replacements will be
needed nationwide by 2015. The shortage in Texas is also acute.
"Because El Paso is a geographically isolated
market, the UTEP School of Nursing supplies many of the nurses
that practice in the city," said Rene Hurtado, a spokesman
for Sierra Providence Health Network.
El Pasoan Josie Olivar, a registered nurse who's
enrolled in a master's degree nursing program at the University
of Phoenix, said she hopes the new program is not just a matter
of producing more nurses as quickly as possible.
"I hope they're not cutting corners, because
that would put the public at risk," said Olivar, who's been
a nurse for 23 years. "We also can't recruit and retain nurses
without addressing the other issues that have contributed to burnout
in the profession.
"As a nurse, I've had to move from job to
job in order to get the benefits that would allow me to continue
my education," she said. "I hope to teach nursing one
day. Hospitals need to provide more incentives for nurses. Schools
ought to consider bringing nurses who retired early into the classroom
to teach, perhaps on a part-time basis."
Anders said the new degree program will allow UTEP
to offer summer nursing courses that were not available before
due to budget limitations. "There's not going to be any changes
in the courses or the faculty who teach," he said. "Our
accreditors require certain things, such as a certain number of
clinicals, and UTEP has its own requirements for us as well."
Diane Monsivais, a registered nurse who teaches
in UTEP's College of Health Sciences, has spent 32 years in the
profession. The reasons for the lack of nursing faculty and nurses
in the field are myriad, but she said the main reasons include
poor decisions by hospitals in the past and the broad range of
careers available to women today.
"Many hospitals downsized in the 1990s, and
thinking they would replace them with medical technicians, they
laid off many registered nurses," Monsivais said. "Then
they realized that the technicians could not do the work of an
RN. We don't have enough faculty to teach the courses, so we can't
offer more courses. The average age of nursing faculty is 54,
so we do not have enough replacements for the faculty that leave
or retire.
"In the past, nursing was one of the few professions
that was open to women, so many women became nurses. But, now,
women have many more professions to choose from," she said.
Carlos De Avila, 32, another UTEP nursing student,
is a licensed vocational nurse but wants to attain the level of
registered nurse. He said that ways to recruit more people into
the field include educating the public about the nursing profession,
having nurses speak to prospective students at career day events
in schools, and having health fairs.
"A lot of my friends were in the health-care
profession, and that's how I got drawn into it," De Avila
said.
Monsivais said area hospitals such as Rio Vista
contribute greatly to the education of UTEP's nursing students
by helping to provide practical and real-life settings.
"The people at Rio Vista don't get paid for
helping us. We owe a lot of appreciation to that kind of support,"
she said.
The grant will be used to pay for faculty salaries,
for program content fees and for consulting and start-up fees.
Hurtado said Tenet Healthcare Foundation and Sierra
Providence Health Network also gave El Paso Community College
a $50,000 grant to collaborate with UTEP "to increase the
student retention rate at the community college, so that the pool
of students who enroll in the nursing degree program will expand."
Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at
dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140.
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