Hoping to address the region's growing shortage of nurses and technicians, community colleges and hospitals in northern Virginia have begun working together to subsidize nursing faculty positions and training programs. The region, which is part of the DC metropolitan area, lost about 5,000 nurses over the past six years, while the number of new workers stayed flat. As a result, the region has only 682 trained nurses per 100,000 residents, 30 percent lower than the national average. To address this gap--which is expected to grow worse over time--a local community college president has formed the Northern Virginia Health Care Workforce Alliance, under which local universities are expanding nursing programs and local hospitals are subsidizing the training of new nurse faculty members. The Alliance, which has $4 million in funding from the state, federal government and hospitals, would like to double the number of nurses and grow the number of techs by 50 percent in just four years.
To learn more about the program:
- read this item in The Washington Post