Nurses are in demand

By Cindy Landrum  

JUNE 16, 2011 12:04 p.m. (0)

There’s a push around the country to increase the number of nurses with advanced degrees and two Spartanburg colleges have a part in that.

Converse College will be partnering with Vanderbilt University to give students the opportunity to earn a master’s degree in nursing that could lead to careers as nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and nurse executives.

And the Mary Black School of Nursing at the University of South Carolina Upstate is working on a direct entry program that would allow people with baccalaureate degrees in other fields to pursue a master’s degree in nursing.

Nursing is expected to be one of the hottest growing professions for several years.

First, the population in South Carolina and the nation is growing older as baby boomers hit the age where they have and seek help for more health issues.

Second, nursing programs had not been able to keep up with demand before the recession caused older nurses to delay retirement.

And, nurses are expected to have an expanded role due to health care reform.

Those are the reasons some are predicting the shortage of nurses to hit around 260,000 by 2025.

Lynette Hamlin, dean of the Mary Black School of Nursing, gave two reasons for nursing schools not keeping up with demand.

Too few nurses seek the advanced degrees necessary to teach and the academia pay scale falls far short of what a nurse with an advanced degree can make in the field.

Converse College is partnering with Vanderbilt University to give Converse students the opportunity to pursue an advanced nursing degree. The five-year program results in a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Converse and a master’s degree in nursing from Vanderbilt.

Jeff Barker, vice president for academic affairs at Converse, said it wasn’t feasible for Converse to start a baccalaureate degree program in nursing because other schools in Spartanburg have them.

Instead, he said, the school forged an agreement with Vanderbilt so students will spend three years at Converse completing general education and biology coursework followed by two years of nursing coursework at Vanderbilt, which is ranked among the top 15 nursing schools in the nation.

Students aren’t guaranteed a spot at Vanderbilt, but Barker said the school expects all students who complete the Converse part of the program with an adequate grade point average will get in.

Students need to complete 78 hours of study at Converse and score at least 1,000 on the Graduate Record Exam, he said.

Only four colleges in South Carolina offer advanced nursing degrees, with Clemson University being the only one in the Upstate.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that nursing is the top occupation for job growth through 2018.

“Students in this program will help prepare and mentor the next generation of nurses,” Barker said. “Spartanburg has been a platform for students wanting to go into the medical fields and this will just add to it.”

Hamlin said USC Upstate’s direct entry program has received preliminary approval from the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education.

The program would begin in 2013.

The Mary Black School of Nursing is one of the largest nursing programs in the state. It graduates more than 200 nurses each year.

People who have baccalaureate degrees in other fields who want to enter nursing would be admitted to the program.

The students would take the nursing courses required to hold clinical leader roles, she said.