New funds will help nursing shortage

SAGINAW COUNTY (WJRT) -- (08/12/08)--New funding may help alleviate Michigan's critical nursing shortage.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm came to Mid-Michigan Tuesday to announce an increase in the funding for the Michigan Nurse Corps.

The corps is an initiative to train new nurses, but one of the biggest problems the state has is not having enough nursing educators.

Nursing is one field where there seem to be more openings than job applicants, but the state is hoping to do something about that before the nursing shortage in Michigan gets worse.

"There is great demand as we know for nurses," Granholm said.

Granholm says Michigan's nursing shortage will be at 7,000 in 2010. The state has plenty of people who want to become nurses.

"We don't have a shortage of students," she said. "We have 4,400 people on a waiting list, but what they haven't had is the right number of faculty."

And that's why the governor came to Saginaw Valley State University, which has a nursing program that is having trouble keeping up with the demand.

"We have 64 students each semester and we have six semesters of students. To have room for everyone, it's going to be nice," said nursing student Summer Brown.

With funding from the state, SVSU is teaming up with Covenant Healthcare to help produce more nursing educators.

"Take people at Covenant who are nurses but don't have degrees, put them through an accelerated program to get degrees so they then get be part of our clinical faculty pool and they can help educate students," said SVSU's J.J. Boehn.

That's what nursing school Dean Jan Blecke wants to hear.

"We are always struggling to find qualified people to teach for us," Blecke said.

In all, $1.5 million was awarded Tuesday to 10 nursing schools and hospitals.

The governor says the funding will help create 42,000 nursing graduates over the next five years.

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