UTEP receives $4 Million to help address nursing shortage
The University of Texas at El Paso's School of Nursing has been awarded nearly $4 million from the U.S. Department of Labor to accelerate the training of future registered nurses and address the nursing shortage in Texas.
UTEP is spearheading the efforts to create the Successful Transition and Retention (STaR) Program, a new graduate nurse residency program that will provide education, training and job placement assistance in the registered nurse occupation in which employers are using H-1B visas to hire foreign nurses. The goal of the program is to raise the professional and technical skill level of American graduate nurses to reduce the use of temporary skilled foreign professionals in Texas hospitals.
STaR consists of two innovative pathways: the New Graduate Nurse Immersion Residency (NGNIR) will provide students with on-the-job training at eight Texas hospitals and enable new graduate nurses to transition to the role of bedside nurses in a quality, efficient and cost-effective manner; and the Specialty Nurse Accelerated Program (SNAP) Fellowship will continue as an accelerated, intensive training for new graduate nurses in their field of specialty.
"This award illustrates our commitment to our clinical partners and to the other schools of nursing in this great state of Texas," said UTEP School of Nursing Dean Elias Provencio-Vasquez, Ph.D., the grant's principal investigator. "It's a new way of educating the next generation of nurses to be aligned with the changing health care system."
Other academic and clinical partners involved in the effort are Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center – Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing, the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, along with hospitals from the Hospital Corporation of America, which include Del Sol Medical Center and Las Palmas Medical Center in El Paso; and six Central Texas hospitals that are part of St. David's HealthCare.
"This is wonderful news for UTEP and especially for the School of Nursing. This grant validates UTEP's determination to implement innovative solutions to address the nursing shortage in our community and nationally. UTEP is committed to providing our students with preparation that aligns well with the changing health care landscape and ensures the success of the graduates of our nursing programs," said UTEP President Diana Natalicio.
The award is part of $183 million in grants recently awarded by the Department of Labor to 43 public-private partnerships serving 28 states through the second round of funding under the H-1B Technical Skills Training Grant Competition. The grants will provide education, training and job placement assistance related to high-growth fields in which employers are currently using the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program to hire foreign workers.
According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, Texas is facing a nursing shortage of 71,000 nurses by 2020. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics projects that between 2008 and 2018, the biggest increase in job growth will occur in registered nurses with 581,500 new jobs. This represents almost 200 additional nurses at Del Sol Medical Center and Las Palmas Medical Center and almost 500 for St. David's HealthCare and its six hospitals in the Austin area, according to the grant proposal.
