The Jackson Memorial Foundation has donated $300,000 to Miami Dade College (MDC) to bolster its nursing program in an effort to help alleviate the critical nursing shortage in South Florida.
The first annual donation will be used to support 80 full scholarships on a yearly basis. The donation will also allow the College to hire two additional full-time and up to eight adjunct faculty members to augment staffing. In addition, all of the students clinical experiences will be provided at the Jackson Health System (JHS) and JHS will provide two nurse educators to serve as faculty. Administrators from MDCs Medical Center Campus lauded the agreement. The State Board of Nursing, which controls nursing school enrollment, permits MDC to admit up to 690 students annually, making it the largest nursing program of its kind in the United States. “I hope we can do this more often and get more nurses into the community,” said Rolando Rodriguez, president of the Jackson Memorial Foundation. The shortage of nurses is getting worse. The Department of Health and Human Services projects that nationally, based on current vacancy rates, there will be more than one million unfilled registered nurse positions by 2020. One of the major reasons for this shortfall is the shortage of nursing faculty For example, nationally, nursing schools turned away more than 41,000 qualified applicants in 2005 because they are at capacity. For the fall 2006 semester alone, MDC received nearly 2,600 applications for the 330 available slots in its nursing program. The collaboration between MDC and JHS is a move in the right direction. “We are thrilled to engage in such a critical agreement. The citizens of South Florida are the ultimate beneficiaries of this,” said MDC President Dr. Eduardo J. Padrón. ” The community gets more nurses, MDC provides opportunities for 80 more students to enter its nursing school each year, the students get full scholarships and JHS gets nurses who are prepared in that facilitys nursing culture. Everybody wins.” In related news, MDC will begin offering Bachelor of Science degrees in nursing in 2008.
