Governor Phil Scott and the Agency of Human Services (AHS) has awarded $5.13 million for nursing workforce development at the UVM Health Network, Northwestern Medical Center, Southern Vermont Medical Center, and Cedar Hill Continuing Care Community.
The grants seek to reduce a shortage of clinical educators and financial obstacles for prospective students. The initiative will provide tuition assistance, paid release time or study stipends, and clinical support at the worksite. It aims to draw new students into Vermont nursing programs and ease advanced degree education for existing nurses.
The funds, proposed by the Governor and appropriated through Act 183 and additional federal State Fiscal Recovery funds, will enable healthcare workers to pursue nursing career pathways while maintaining paid employment. The program also provides academic and wraparound support, supports current nurses in becoming eligible clinical educators, and offers financial incentives for eligible healthcare employees to take on clinical educator roles.
“Without this grant, many qualified, competent, caring Licensed Nursing Assistants at Cedar Hill could not afford to advance their careers to become nurses and LPNs,” said Patricia Horn, Community Executive Director of Cedar Hill Continuing Care Community in Windsor.
AHS’ $1.5 million grant to the University of Vermont Health Network will specifically support tuition and other education expenses for Health Network employees enrolling in an accelerated BSN program developed in partnership with Norwich University. This program provides individuals with non-nursing-related training a 15-month pathway to earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing (BSN).
The funds will also support a two-year Master of Nursing program launched in partnership with Vermont State University and Norwich University, tailored to individuals who already have a BSN and want to pursue clinical instruction opportunities at all Vermont colleges of nursing.
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Categories: Health Care, Press Release
They will just train here on our tax dollar and then leave as soon as they can to another state.
where did all the nurses go///quit the job would not take the covid kill shot///took the shot then died///more information coming///this could be a uvm scandal///5.13 million will never be seen again
There is so much to unpack in this piece I literally don’t know where to begin. This is my profession. I no longer work actively but still hold the license of Registered Nurse in the state of Vermont.
A great many of us older nurses left in the last three years because the profession of health care has changed so dramatically from our early days. This isn’t just my opinion. I have talked with a great many of my peers across the state and the country regarding the same topic (somewhere approximating 70 odd nurses). Almost all of us cite the main reason is the fundamental change in the profession of healthcare and more specifically, nursing, which impacts the care we are required and allowed to provide as well as the legal responsibility which has grown to be a deterrence. There is too much to go into in a comment on a newspaper. All the ideas purported above are grand… and have been financed and put in place repeatedly for the last 40 years I have been in healthcare. There is always a “shortage” of nurses. It is hard, laborious, challenging work with little compensation (which is not the main motivator among nurses by the way) or support. Also, the quality of students in nursing schools for the last ten years has declined significantly since I was received my primary education. And I taught clinical at The Elms college in the 2010’s. They were already in trouble then.
But the answer is always “throw money at it” and hopefully it will fix it. It never does. The number of travel nurses filling positions in the institutions in our state is phenomenal but not necessarily different than any other state. They travel because if the assignment at a particular institution is really bad, they only have to tolerate it for a specific short period of time and then they are moving on. And they are better compensated for it. I know, because I trained hundreds of them at one of my last positions as a nurse.
It is a symptom of our society and culture and will only get worse as the young citizens of our country don’t want to do the hard, laborious and challenging work of caring for other human beings. Wiping up body fluids, watching someone die, comforting family, being forced to work without appropriate support while administrators sit in their offices is demoralizing and I can’t blame them necessarily. But they don’t have the cahones anymore to do the job. That is just a fact. That is one of the reasons I retired early. That and my own family’s need for my services. Sometimes I feel like I run a nursing home in my house. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Respectfully,
Pam Baker