Training Today for Tomorrow’s Health Care
Published May 16, 2008
Middle Tennessee State University opened a 24,000-square-foot addition to the Cason-Kennedy Nursing Building in 2007.
When Middle Tennessee State University opened the doors of its $5.5 million nursing-school addition in January 2007, the doors of opportunity also opened for 12 prospective nursing students. That’s because the new space makes room for 64 students instead of 52. It also features a 20-bed clinical lab, 78-seat master classroom and 60-seat computer lab.
While Nashville is the home of two premier medical schools, Vanderbilt University and Meharry Medical College, they are joined by many more institutions in the area that are taking up the challenge of educating America’s next generation of health-care providers - from nurses to allied health professionals in fields such as imaging, therapy and medical technology.
In addition to Vanderbilt and MTSU, Belmont University and Tennessee State University in Nashville, Austin Peay State University in Clarksville and Cumberland University in Lebanon all boast nursing schools.
This strong concentration of health-care educational options is one reason Nashville was chosen as the pilot community for a project sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for a Competitive Workforce. The initiative will develop a model that other communities may emulate to boost the number of trained nurses by increasing the number of nursing faculty.
“Many more qualified students are registering to go to the nursing schools than the schools have the capacity to teach,” says Nancy Eisenbrandt, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce senior vice president for workforce development. The Nashville chamber is spearheading the effort.
“The U.S. chamber has been looking at ways to expand careers particularly of soon-to-retire nurses,” Eisenbrandt says. Thus, a consortium of Nashville-area stakeholders has joined forces to develop a plan of action.
“If you look at the nursing faculty, it’s (largely) 50 to 55 years old. So you can see what’s going to happen in a short period of time. We need to slow that process down and increase the opportunity to train master’s level nurses for faculty positions,” she says. The project is aptly dubbed the Nashville Nursing Faculty Fast-Forward.
Story by Sharon H. Fitzgerald
Photo by Brian McCord
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