Nursing Students are Wanted… AND NEEDED!

Nursing Students are Wanted…
AND NEEDED!
NOEL C. MADIC BSN, RN, Good Samaritan Hospital (Ohio)

Although the immediate shortage of nurses in this country has abated somewhat over the last year or two, the longer term prognosis is that the anticipated shortage for them is expected to be as critical as ever over the next decade and onward. This in mind, it seems equally as critical that steps are made to somehow help to account for the nursing needs of the countries population moving forward.

Most of the recent and related studies done regarding the anticipated nursing shortage, generally circle back to the need for expanding our pertinent education services. This expansion would in turn help to enable these schools to accommodate more of the roughly 50,000 nursing school applicants who were not able to gain acceptance to a nursing school in the US last year.

Practically speaking there is no near-term “fix” on the horizon that solves the instructor and preceptor shortages, let alone that will account for the lack of clinical, or even classroom space available to these students. This does not bode well for many of those applicants who are hoping to get their nursing careers started here, any time soon.

Perhaps one of the more immediate “solutions” to the domestic shortage of classroom space for nursing school applicants might be found over-seas. This is certainly the conclusion come to on the part of Ron Hoppe and John O’Brien of Worldwide Healthstaff Associates Ltd. Worlwide’s Philippine offices have recently become affiliated with the St. Luke’s College of Nursing in Quezon City. These two entities have designed an American based nursing program for American students wanting to pursue their Bachelor’s Degrees. The program is now available to US based nursing applicants via Worldwide’s US offices.

Mr. Hoppe is a principal of Worldwide and said, “The fix to our nursing school systems under-capacity does not seem imminent. Until we figure out some way to add that needed capacity, the educational situation that exists here currently is simply not working for thousands of qualified students who are hoping to start their nurse training. On the upside, there are excellent nursing schools in the Philippines that can accommodate a number of these students. St. Luke’s and Worldwide Healthstaff hope to be able to help at least 90 of these to find school placement starting in June.”

At the outset one might wonder about potential licensing issues and such. John O’Brien who is a Senior Associate of Worldwide Healthstaff was quick to respond to those.

“American hospitals and medical concerns have recruited literally thousands of nurses from the Philippines over the last decade or so. The vast majority of those nurses have gone on to become very productive members of their respective workplaces. Obviously they’ve passed the National exam en-route to their becoming licensed nurses here. So we know that schools like St. Luke’s are capable of producing strong, license ready and degreed RN candidates for work here. Furthermore, we know this because they have a proven history of doing exactly that.”

When asked about the type of students who had called on the program thus far, Mr. O’Brien said, “The only really over-riding commonality among the students we’ve spoken to so far is that they just want to get their medical careers going. It looks to be an added benefit that we have been able to format this program with a very competitive tuition structure. In any case, this is certainly a contingency of the program that is resonating with the students we have talked to, to date”.

 Mr. Hoppe followed up on these points saying, “I think it important that our affiliation with St.  Luke’s is long standing. We have specific knowledge of the institutions instructional capabilities in the nursing profession and have worked first hand with any number of their graduates who are currently working in the U.S. as we speak. 90 placements certainly isn’t a large number, but hopefully we can assist this group in becoming 90 more nurses that will be available for work at our hospitals and medical institutions 3, to 4 years down the road. Moeover, we have almost zero concern that every one of them will be needed here at that time.”

Ron Hoppe and John O’Brien can be accessed via their company e-mail at rhoppe@healthstaff.org, or jobrien@healthstaff.org. •

Mr. Madic is the Continuing Education Coordinator with Good Samaritan Hospital and is a proud graduate of St. Luke’s College of nursing, class of 1998.