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Vital Signs
TCSG is tackling the nation’s nursing workforce shortage through community partnerships and innovative ideas
By Christy Simo
VITAL SIGNS
If you’ve ever spent time in a hospital, you no doubt remember the nurses who cared for you or your loved one. Doctors pop in from time to time, but it’s the nurses who check your vitals, help you to the restroom, and generally make sure you’re recovering OK.
But Georgia – and the entire country – is facing a future where nurses, the very people who care for us at our must vulnerable, will be in severely short supply unless something is done now to increase their numbers.
“If you ask 100 healthcare providers at the hospital level, all 100 would say to you, the No. 1 problem right now is the workforce shortage around nursing,” says Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC) President Dr. Ivan Allen. “The shortages are everywhere. They’re from your bedside nurse all the way through ICU.”
And that was before the pandemic, which prompted many nurses to change careers or retire. Now, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration, Georgia alone will have a shortfall of 6,700 nurses by 2025.
“We were aware of the nursing shortage prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic brought an awareness at a more urgent time that we need to do something innovative, something now to address the nursing shortage,” says Albany Technical College President Dr. Emmett Griswold.
Luckily, the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) is addressing this challenge with innovative ideas and solutions that are immediately ramping up the pipeline.
“Across the board, there is no area of nursing that’s ‘at capacity,’” agrees Dr. Jermaine Whirl, president of Augusta Technical College. “So, we’re doing everything we can to try to fill that workforce need.”
From creative partnerships with local healthcare systems to add more faculty and classroom space to study abroad programs and introducing the field to younger students, TCSG is moving at lightning speed to provide the state’s healthcare systems with quality, dedicated nurses who are committed to providing the best care.
Space To Grow
In rural Southwest Georgia, there is no shortage of students interested in becoming nurses. Albany Technical College currently offers 15 different healthcare programs, including nursing, practical nursing, and phlebotomy. But space was tight, and the college required more room to grow and expand. Plus, the main healthcare system in the area, like hospitals everywhere, needed more nurses.
Some 85% of Albany Tech’s nursing graduates are hired right out of college by Phoebe Putney Health Care System, which on average needs about 300 more nurses at its facilities.
“We really needed to have a big play here in Southwest Georgia to increase capacity,” says Scott Steiner, president and CEO of Phoebe Putney Health System.
To address that shortage, Albany Tech committed to increasing its nursing graduates from its existing 40 students a year to 200 by 2024 as the first phase of its Living and
Learning Initiative. But in order to do that, they needed more space.
“They just didn’t have the teaching space to accommodate that,” Steiner says. “So, we said we will make a major investment.”
The healthcare system provided $40 million to build a new nursing school for Albany Tech on its campus. It’s the second phase of the initiative.
When completed for fall 2024 classes, the 130,000square-foot facility, located in the historic Albany High School across the street from the main hospital, will feature 47,000
square feet of teaching space, including telehealth-enhanced classrooms and a health career education center. The second and third floors will feature 80 one-bedroom furnished apartments to provide affordable housing for nursing students. In all, the space will quadruple the number of nurses graduating from the school.
In middle Georgia, CGTC, which welcomed its first class of nursing students in 2016, recently expanded its Associate of Science in Nursing program. A new cohort of 40 students started at its Milledgeville campus in fall 2022. It’s also renovating existing facilities to accommodate more students. “So now we’ll go from zero a few years ago to 120 pretty quickly,” Allen says.
On the east side of Georgia, Augusta Tech faced similar challenges. Its nursing program was busting at the seams, and classrooms were a hot commodity. But the process to construct a new building on campus is typically a lengthy one that involves approval from the state legislature.
“If you’re successful, you would get design money in year one, construction money in year two, then funds for equipment and technology and furniture in year three,” Whirl says. “So, you’re looking at 2024, 2025 before you can even attempt to get a larger space to deal with the issue.”
There had to be another way
Across town, Piedmont Augusta was looking for a way to use its Summerville campus. The 231-bed acute-care facility had served the Augusta area since 1952, most recently as an overflow space to care for COVID patients during the pandemic. But now it was sitting idle – and it was perfect for the college’s needs. So, when Whirl reached out to the Piedmont Augusta Foundation to see if there was anything they could do to help, a new home for Augusta Tech’s School of Health Sciences was born.
The hospital invested $1.8 million to convert the campus into a teaching space. The medical office building was transformed to house classrooms, faculty offices, a library, and more. The hospital was re-envisioned as a place where students can do their hands-on clinical rotations.
In January 2023, Augusta Tech cut the ribbon on the new facility, which now houses 23 programs of study, from surgical technology and respiratory care to radiologic technology and nursing.
“The students started showing up the next Monday,” says Laurie Ott, president of Piedmont Augusta Foundation. “Our hospital that we purchased out of bankruptcy is now filled up and a dedicated campus to Augusta Tech’s allied health sciences. It’s really exciting.”
Typically, nursing students practice in a space that simulates a hospital or inpatient environment. But this is a real hospital that only a few years ago was treating patients. Students can work with millions of dollars’ worth of current technology and equipment and can move through the different spaces of a real hospital just like they would on the job.
“We can have our EMT students back up the truck into the emergency room. They can take a mannequin off the back of that truck, roll ‘em in the hospital, check them in. Take them to an operating room, take them to a nursing station and a nurse. … You can’t simulate that.”
Whirl says that type of environment is virtually unheard
of in higher education, where every one of the students can move through real time and interact with other allied health students in different disciplines, working together as team. “It’s such a cool experience,” he says. “Our students know what that will look like once they go to work. And that will make the student’s [experience] so much more seamless, because it’s an interdisciplinary education.”
Encouraging New Faces
Even with all the new space to welcome new nursing students, if there aren’t enough faculty to teach those students nor financial support to encourage students to get their degree, a nursing program can’t grow.
To address those issues, Georgia’s healthcare systems are stepping up to support TCSG’s efforts to increase its faculty and student numbers through new marketing, recruitment efforts, and financial support.
This is especially crucial in nursing schools, as the student-faculty ratio is set by the Georgia Board of Nursing at 10/1 to ensure the safety for all involved.
In Middle Georgia, Houston Healthcare is offering its nurses the opportunity to gain hours as instructors when CGTC nursing students come to the hospital. The Dedicated Education Nurses (DEN) program combines 180 hours of clinical work by students with the supervision and mentoring of professional nurses volunteering their time to teach in a hospital environment.
“It broadens the opportunity for more nurses to get the practical training they need here in our hospital,” says Charles Briscoe, CEO. “When we’re able to bring in additional nurses in the hospital setting, we’re able to provide more clinical training slots in the hospital.”
In Southwest Georgia, Albany Tech is looking outside its coverage region to draw high-quality faculty to Albany. Phoebe Putney Health System is footing the bill, hiring a recruiter specifically to seek out new nursing faculty and providing financial support to boost pay once they are hired.
“We have to give opportunities for others to relocate to Southwest Georgia to become educators,” says Griswold of Albany Tech. “Phoebe has also offered to pay a relocation package for those individuals who want to come here and teach. So, they’ve been a tremendous partner with us.”
Augusta Tech, too, is investing in new faculty, with plans to add eight more nursing teachers over time. “That will allow us to go from 60 students to serving over 200 students,” Whirl says. “Within five years, we want to be able to graduate 200 nursing students a year.”
And while there’s no shortage of students wanting to become nurses, it’s important that everyone who wants to become a nurse has that opportunity.
The state’s HOPE Career Grant already offers 100% free tuition to students pursuing a degree in practical nursing and other allied health degrees, but there are still many students who need assistance.
“If there’s somebody who has a desire and the aptitude to be a nurse, there shouldn’t be any barriers,” says Ott of the Piedmont Augusta Foundation. “We’re not in a position where we can say, well you want to be a nurse but it’s just financially not possible, so sit on the sidelines. The pandemic proved that we can’t have people sitting out a career if they want to contribute.”
To ensure every student who wants to get a nursing-related degree at Augusta Tech has the chance to do so, Piedmont Augusta Foundation established a scholarship fund with support from donors in the local community. By the end of 2022, they had raised more than $1 million, and the first two recipients are already getting support to cover their nursing school tuition fees and books at the beginning of 2023.
“We’re going to take somebody who otherwise would have a barrier to nursing education and create a member of the healthcare workforce,” Ott says, noting the strong partnership between Augusta Tech, its president and deans of the health sciences school and nursing programs to make this happen. “It is so important for us to have partners like that who understand the urgency and want to do everything
possible to make this partnership not just survive but thrive.”
As part of the scholarship requirements, the students agree to work with Piedmont Augusta at one of its facilities for a set period of time.
“In exchange for covering their expenses, they basically have a guaranteed job after graduation with Piedmont,” Whirl says. “The beauty of that is for the student, they come out with no debt [and] a guaranteed job.”
Whirl notes that 95% of Augusta Tech’s graduates stay in the area, and the average age of a nursing student is 26. “They’re raising families here, they want be here in Augusta,” he says. “So that’s a big win for them, to be able to have a local employer to make that investment where that they know they can have a long-term career.”
Innovative Ideas
Augusta Tech’s partnership with Piedmont Augusta is just one of many innovative ideas Georgia’s technical colleges are dreaming up to tackle the nursing shortage from all sides.
They’re also partnering with other colleges on study abroad programs to enrich a student’s experience and connecting with Georgia’s career academies to show kids the careers you can have in healthcare at an earlier age.
This year, CGTC welcomed its first study abroad program in the Caribbean. Thirteen students spent 10 days in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in partnership with Trinity Healthcare. Students volunteered at the local hospital and healthcare clinics, trained local healthcare workers in best practices, and obtained crucial community outreach skills. This type of service-oriented learning opportunity is rare – CGTC is the only technical college in the state to offer something like this.
“You just don’t see that in a typical technical college setting often, if ever. And Central Georgia Technical College is out there doing that kind of training,” says Houston Healthcare’s Briscoe, who traveled with the first cohort of students earlier this year. “It was just a wonderful experience to share some knowledge with that country, but also expose those students to a healthcare system different from ours, just to get a little more perspective on life and on the opportunities of the career they’re pursuing.”
“The hope is with the training we’re doing, especially in healthcare and in other areas around the world, we are preparing students who can not only go anywhere, apply their trade, understand cultural barriers, and overcome them to be successful in their own careers,” Allen says, “but also to lift others in communities around the world.”
CGTC is stretching the pipeline even longer by partnering with several career academies around the region to show kids in high school the potential that lies in a nursing degree.
Since 2007, Georgia has established more than 50 career academies around the state. The schools are designed to offer high school students access to accredited college-level courses and technical certification programs. Through its Scrubs program, CGTC invites high schoolers to one of its campuses to see demos, walk through the lab and teaching areas, and talk with nursing faculty.
“We’re trying to get those 9th, 10th, 11th graders interested,” Allen says. “We are educating the next generation on all the opportunity in these healthcare careers.”
“That’s the wonderful thing about Central Georgia Technical College – Dr. Ivan Allen and his staff. They’re always looking at creative ways to get a goal achieved,” Briscoe says. “Even if it’s a goal that people say will never happen, that team seems to find a way.”
Through all these efforts, Georgia’s technical colleges will be adding hundreds of new nurses to the state’s healthcare system. And that bodes well for not just the hospitals, but also the communities they serve.
“To have true workforce development and true community progress, all facets of a community’s infrastructure must work. That includes the education system, and it includes the healthcare system,” Allen says. “It’s a concerted community effort.” ~
