A new round of funding will ultimately help to create more Baltimore nurse jobs.
The Community College of Baltimore County recently announced that it has received a $4.9 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to train more students to become registered nurses. The community college has campuses in Catonsville, Dundalk and Essex.
The college hopes to use the funding to train up to 2,000 students, about 1,00 of which would receive degrees before the grant expired. The majority of the funding will be used for recruitment and retention programs aimed at students and the renovation of existing laboratory space at the Catonsville and Essex campuses.
Other portions of the funding will be used to:
- Create an accelerated associate nursing degree program to help students become registered nurses in 17 months, as opposed to two years.
- Create a new bridge program to help licensed practical nurses at St. Agnes and Kernan hospitals in Baltimore receive the training they need to become registered nurses.
- Create a certified nursing assistant training program in cooperation with the Baltimore City Office of Employment Development and the St. Ambrose Learn to Earn program.
The overall objective of CCBC's plan is to address Maryland's shortage of nurses, a problem that has existed for more than 10 years. Even though the recession helped delay a spike in the shortage, as many nurses put off retirement or re-entered the workforce, it will soon resurface.
"Even though the economy has curbed the shortage, we need to do this now to produce the work force that will be needed when nurses retire," Carol D. Eustis, dean of the School of Health Professions at CCBC, told the Baltimore Business Journal. "And getting more under-employed or unemployed people back into the work force is going to help the economy."
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