Twenty-five organizations will split more than $78 million in new federal funding intended to bolster the nursing pipeline, the Department of Labor announced Thursday.
The grants will support public-private workforce training programs in 17 states and address ongoing staffing challenges across the healthcare continuum. Awardees include colleges and universities aiming to increase the number of nursing instructors and educators, building capacity for more nursing students.
Other healthcare end employment partners in the Nursing Expansion Grant Program will use worker-centered strategies to create nursing professional pathway programs. Applicants were required to design models that would connect workers, unions and employers with community-based organizations and training institutions.
“The grants we’re awarding today recognize the burden so many nurses have shouldered for too long by supporting programs to expand and diversify the workforce,” Brent Parton, acting Department of Labor assistant secretary for employment and training, said in announcing the awards. “These investments will also help to ensure the nation’s well-being and continue to strengthen our care economy using proven practices and strategies.”
Among the programs is one sponsored by Sanford Health, which includes the Good Samaritan Society, the nation’s largest nursing home provider.
Sanford’s Chief Nursing Officer Erica DeBoer, RN, said their program starts June 1 and “will allow us to improve first-year retention for new nurses and increase the number of nurses in the Registered Nurse career pathway in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa by expanding paid internship programs.”
DeBoer noted that new nurses face the highest work-related stress during the first three months of practice and up to 70% of new nurses either quit their jobs or transfer to another unit within one year. That’s been a common refrain in skilled nursing, which by some estimates see annual turnover of more than 100%.
“These internship experiences will expand the clinical skills and knowledge of nursing students to better prepare them to join the nursing workforce,” DeBoer said. “In addition, the funding will enable us to increase the quality of nurse orientation and the quantity of preceptors in all care settings by updating our advanced preceptor curriculum. This will include individualized tools, resources and improved access for long-term care, acute care, and ambulatory nurses serving in rural areas.”
A full list of grantees is available here.
The skilled nursing sector has lost more than 210,000 workers since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many providers have struggled to attract and train new entry-level workers such as certified nursing assistants during the pandemic. Registered nurses are also increasingly hard to attract; one recent study found that one-fifth of current RNs plan to leave healthcare over the next five years.
The Department of Labor funding will support partnerships in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin. Federal officials said the training programs would address health equity “by embedding diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility strategies.”
“By doing so, the programs will ensure people from historically marginalized and underrepresented communities have pathways to good jobs and careers in nursing,” said a statement issued Thursday.
