Quinnipiac School of Nursing Dean Lisa O'Connor and SCSU College of Health and Human Services Dean Sandra Bulmer sign the new YNHH partnership agreement at Thursday's presser.
Four colleges and universities from across the region signed onto a new partnership with Yale New Haven Health (YNHH) in a bid to boost the number of nursing school graduates amidst a healthcare workforce crisis.
Those four higher ed institutions are Gateway Community College, Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), Quinnipiac University, and Fairfield University.
Representatives from each of those schools joined new YNHH CEO Chris O’Connor and YNHH Chief Nursing Executive Beth Beckman to sign that deal and tout the new partnership during a celebratory press conference Thursday afternoon. The presser took place in a second-floor conference room at 55 Park St.
Beckman said that the partnership should result in at least 557 additional nursing graduates from these four schools’ nursing programs between 2022 and 2026.
For context, she said ‚“that’s enough additional new graduates to staff an average-sized hospital.”
YNHH will help make those nursing-graduate-number goals a reality by investing at least $1.7 million each year over the next four years into helping these schools hire new faculty, buy medical supplies and equipment for their classrooms, and make “clinical placements” of students in real-world hospital settings at YNHH.
YNHH CEO Chris O'Connor.
This is a “very creative and exciting way to bring more students to the field of nursing and have them fill positions in our healthcare institution,” said O’Connor, who stepped into the regional hospital system’s top role this week after the retirement of his predecessor, Marna Borgstrom.
This aid from YNHH will help “greatly expand access to nursing programs, which traditionally have turned away far too many qualified students,” added SCSU College of Health and Human Services Dean Sandra Bulmer.
YNHH Chief Nursing Executive Beth Beckman.
How exactly will this expansion of the nursing school-to-workforce pipeline help patients, hospital staff, and the hospital system as a whole?
Fairfield University Egan School of Nursing & Health Studies Dean Meredith Wallace Kazer said that the Covid-19 pandemic took a pre-existing shortage in nursing staff and turned it into a full-blown “nursing and healthcare crisis.”
“Five hundred nurses would make all the difference,” said Beckman.
“It would probably at this point permit us to eliminate a lot of the travelers that we have.”
Hospitals all over the country, including YNHH, have turned to traveling nurses during the pandemic to fill staffing gaps left by a dearth of full-time personnel.
While the hospital is grateful for the work that these traveling nurses do, Beckman said, “they are not here with us for a long period of time to become embedded as part of our team. Nor are they the most cost effective way for us to do our business.”
More nursing school graduates will help the regional hospital system bolster its staffing levels, ensure that it has “the right ratios, the right nurses with the right competencies,” and help YNHH live up to its mission of providing high quality care to every patient it serves.
Gateway Community College Division Director of Nursing and Allied Health Sheila Solernu (pictured above) said that Gateway’s nursing program typically gets 400 applicants for only 96 seats.
“There are many, many qualified students out there that are not getting into nursing programs and that really want to be in one,” she said. This partnership should help with exactly that.
Click on the video below to watch the full presser.
One of the ways to interest young people in careers in nursing and medicine and firefighting and rescue careers is to offer junior high first aid, CPR and fire safety training classes and high school paramedic/EMT training, fire safety training, lifeguarding water rescue and ice rescue training, and overdose rescue classes so students can learn life saving lessons that they can use the rest of their lives in their communities.
Many may be inspired to move on to a career in medicine or public safety or fire safety at Gateway and/or then on to a four year degree at the other schools mentioned.
There are high school age first responders in other states, and junior firefighters and junior policing training as well as ROTC Programs in many other places around our country.