HIGH POINT, N.C. — High Point University is starting a new nursing program that the school hopes will help make a dent in the nationwide nursing shortage.
"High Point University is very well equipped for a nursing program being that it already has graduate programs, state of the art labs everything that you could possibly need for a health science or nursing program," said Dr. Racquel Ingram, the founding chair of the High Point University Department of Nursing.
The four-year program will earn graduates a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree, something Dr. Ingram says will make their graduates more desirable to hospitals and leads to better outcomes for patients.
The university is renovating an old church to house the nursing facilities with a clinical skills lab. The lab features simulators of diverse patients to give students real-world experience.
"It is very important for this lab or any lab really to be diverse because that’s what students will face when they go out into the real world of clinical nursing practice or nursing practice," Ingram said.
HPU is starting the program at a time when nurses are in high demand across the country.
"We continue to be impacted by the nursing shortage," said Kenneth Rempher, the Chief Nurse Executive of Cone Health. "I think this is an exacerbation of an existing problem and Covid of course has made it much worse."
Rempher said they are seeing nurses retiring and others just facing fatigue, causing them to leave the industry.
"There’s all kind of fatigue about the work that they do and the fact that they are being called to do more and more in many cases with fewer resources. So it’s kind of a vicious cycle," Rempher said.
The school to hospital pipeline is also clogged. Hospitals need more nurses and nursing schools need educators.
"We do everything we can to support our academic partners in providing faculty and serving as a clinical site, working together to come up with creative solutions but the lack of faculty is indeed a concern that we continue to see," Rempher said.
Dr. Ingram said they are facing the same struggles of finding nurse educators.
"We are very hopeful and very grateful and knowing that we will find the nurse educators who are the best fit for the High Point University nursing program."
Ingram hopes their program can grow and help the nursing workforce and the public as a whole.
"We are very very serious about extraordinary education and so with the Department of Nursing, our nursing graduates will be extraordinary," Ingram said.