New program coming to Aurora to help with nursing shortage in Colorado
Nurses play a critical role in caring for the sick and injured.
"The nursing role is so pivotal to a patient receiving the care that they need," said Jennifer Broekema the Vice President of Clinical Education at HealthOne. "They're the eyes and the ears of the physician many times."
But there is a nursing shortage in Colorado right now.
"We're seeing it increase given our population growth in, the aging population where we have more need for nursing and medical care. And across the state, we've also seen a lot of nurses who left nursing. Since the pandemic," said Broekema.
That's why HealthOne has decided to form a new partnership with Galen College of Nursing, to bring another state-of-the-art nursing school to Aurora.
"It's really critical that we have the right number of nurses in our hospital to care for you, for your family, for the people of Colorado," said Broekema.
The new Aurora campus will offer a three-year Bachelor of Science in Nursing program and a two-year Associate Degree in Nursing based largely on practice-based learning. It will also have high-tech learning tools like advanced patient simulation laboratories.
"What we're trying to do is help the students critically think through issues," said EVP of Nursing at Galen College of Nursing. "And because we are such a tech-driven society now, it only makes sense that nursing education moves in that direction as well."
HealthOne does have partnerships with other educational institutions that they aren't getting rid of. This program, however, will be more focused on attracting people who are switching careers or who never quite made it through a four-year degree program.
"We're hoping to capture a different part of the population. Then we necessarily have always been able to capture in the past," said Broekema.
They hope that by helping those kinds of people to become nurses they can make a small dent in the number of nurses missing from the healthcare field.
"That we know is likely only to get worse based on current projections," said Broekema.
Classes are expected to begin in July.