Victoria College begins the training process through either the LVN Certification or the Associate Degree in Nursing, which is required before a nurse can earn their RN license. But, the shortage of nurses is a two-fold dilemma.
It's a huge problem in the state of Texas. Texas needs 22,000 more nurses this year to keep up with the growing demand. "There's a lot of older people, our baby boomers are coming up and they're going to need a lot of care. So there's an increase need just in the population for nursing care. And our nurses are older, so they're going to be retiring," says Kathryn Tart, Founding Dean at UHV's School of Nursing. And, by 2020, it's predicted Texas will be 70,000 nurses short. Hospital officials say most of the vacancies are at the RN level.
Both Citizens Medical Center and Detar Hospitals in Victoria have several nursing positions open, but are faring well compared to other parts of the state. At Detar, officials are actively recruiting nurses and have about a dozen recent graduates who are being trained to enter the workforce. Sammie Drehr, the Chief Nursing Officer, says there is about a 5% vacancy rate and those openings are mostly in the high-risk specialties. "We have managed to fill our staffing grids, but we have had to use some extra overtime and some agency nurses in order to fill that," says Drehr.
Citizens is also actively recruiting and crosstraining the current staff members. "We're able to crosstrain those so if one area is short, we may be able to move a nurse from another area over into that area that's short," says Lynne Voskamp, Chief Nursing Officer at Citizens Medical Center.
The goal at both hospitals is to fill any voids without compromising patient care.
It sounds like a simple solution, just hire more nurses. But, class sizes at Texas nursing schools are small because there aren't enough educators to teach incoming students. Income for a Registered Nurse is significantly more in the clinical setting than it is in the classroom setting. Voskamp says, "that's why it's so important for us to continue as nurses to go on and get advanced degrees, so that we can share that knowledge with the newer nurses."
In order to teach, a nurse must have a masters degree or higher. And, getting an advanced degree here in Victoria, until recently, was not possible. An Associate Degree in Nursing was the highest level offered. That was through Victoria College. Then in 2006, the University of Houston - Victoria began offering a Bachelor Degree in Nursing and soon after a Masters Degree in Nursing. "When they brought the Bachelors program here I just knew it was something I wanted to do because I like going to school. I have a thirst for knowledge. I wanted to be smarter and be able to help others," says Crystal Salazar, RN. Salazar is currently enrolled in the BSN program.
The nursing lab is part of the new Allied Health Building at Victoria College and the College allows the UHV nursing students access to the state-of-the-art equipment in order to gain more knowledge.

The key to dealing with the nursing shortage is taking a proactive approach. Thursday night, in part 2 of our series, we'll talk with Victoria College officials about their role in training new nurses and how they are working to get more people interested in the nursing field.