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Hospital, college sign deal |
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Washington County News
http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/hospital_college_sign_deal/news/1095/
Friday, November 09, 2007
By Caitlin Sullivan
The hospital and college are partnering in hopes
of easing the nursing shortage that plagues this area and the country.
In a partnership forged last week, Johnston
Memorial Hospital
agreed to pay $240,000 for three years of salary for a Virginia Highlands
Community College faculty
member. The hospital hopes that a college instructor will be able to bridge the
gap between nursing students and the hospital. He or she would work with students
at the college and at the hospital with the aim of recruiting and retaining
nursing students.
“This (partnership) will be good for our program and the hospital,” VHCC Dean
of Nursing and Allied Health Kathy Mitchell said.
The 400 students in the Virginia Appalachian Tricollege Nursing Program, a
consortium that includes VHCC, Mountain
Empire Community
College and Southwest
Virginia Community
College, use hospitals across the region to
conduct clinicals.
Mitchell said the new faculty member would benefit the students because they’ll
have firsthand knowledge of the hospital.
“(The students will) get a much more thorough experience,” she said.
Johnston Memorial Chief Nursing Officer Kathy Tickle said, “They’ll have a foot
in both camps. They can teach theory to practice.”
She said the hospital also hopes the new collaboration will recruit more
nursing students to stay in the area.
“There’s a tremendous nursing shortage,” Tickle said. “Twenty-five percent of
nurses will retire within the next five years. So we really need to be working
with schools in the area to meet the nursing needs.”
Tickle said the hospital hires between 10 and 20 nurses a year, but filling
night shifts and experienced critical care positions can take two to three
months.
She said aging baby boomers in need of more care and retiring nurses have
combined to create to a nursing shortage across the country.
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