By The US population is aging, bringing with it more complex healthcare needs. At the same time, nurses are leaving the profession as they themselves reach retirement age. And COVID19 only exacerbated a potential nursing crisis.
This phenomenon means nurses are leaving the profession faster than they come into it. But that isn’t because people don’t want to become nurses. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing reports that in 2019, US nursing schools had to reject 80,000 qualified nursing applicants because they didn’t have enough teachers, leaving would-be and much-needed nurses waiting years to get into a program.
To tackle this set-in yet growing problem, Health Carousel recently committed a $200,000 3-year commitment to increasing nurse educators and opening up training capacity in the US and the Philippines.
How They’re Using the Money
Health Carousel is partnering with Chamberlain University to offer scholarships to nurses who want to go back to school to get advanced nursing education degrees. For the most part, these are nurses who’ve been in the field for years and want to advance and shift their nursing careers.
This often includes leading, mentoring, and training new nurses. So this scholarship provides a tremendous opportunity to those who aspire to teach the next generation of nurses.
Some of the funds go to US students, while a portion is earmarked for the Philippines via Health Carousel Philippines. This country has particularly struggled with getting enough teachers with advanced degrees to teach nurses who want to get advanced degrees. For this reason, the Philippines scholarship will be exclusively for those who want to get their Nursing Educator Ph.D.
Part of a Wider Solution
The recent investment in nurse education is part of Health Carousel’s larger commitment to helping nurses get advanced nursing degrees to improve their skills and patient care. Health Carousel’s Light the Way program has been actively working to support ethical and sustainable nurse recruitment since 2004.
This initiative included a scholarship for nurses seeking other advanced nursing degrees. They have already helped several hundred nurses further their careers and deliver higher quality care, thanks in part to the skills they learn in advanced nursing degree programs.
Like other scholarships from this program, the current scholarship will be called the Light the Way scholarship.
The Light the Way Program
The Light the Way program got its name from Florence Nightingale, also known as the “Lady With the Lamp” and the “Founder of Modern Nursing”. According to stories, she traveled by lamplight at night to visit wounded soldiers.
About Health Carousel
Health Carousel has an invested interest in increasing the number of nurses available to fill nursing shortages and knew it was time to act. They are the 17th largest healthcare staffing agency in the US. In both the United States and worldwide, they help healthcare facilities find skilled nurses to fill vacancies through locum tenens travel nursing, and other staffing solutions.
