UNMC seeking money for new nursing facility
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By MELISSA LEE / Lincoln Journal Star
At the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Nursing’s Lincoln division, two out of every three qualified applicants are turned away.
The reason: Nursing hopefuls far outnumber classroom seats in the college’s rented space at the Commerce Court building downtown.
That, nursing leaders say, is an alarming fact given predictions that Nebraska will be 4,000 registered nurses short by the year 2020.
And it’s why UNMC is asking for $175,000 in state money so it can plan for new digs for its Lincoln branch.
A legislative bill introduced last week by Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln would give that planning money to UNMC, which hopes to open the new nursing building by 2012 on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus.
A public hearing on the bill is scheduled for today.
Newer, more spacious facilities are critical if UNMC wants to meet the nation’s nursing shortage head-on, the university says.
“When you think about the looming shortage, for us to turn away two-thirds of qualified applicants, that’s very large,” said Virginia Tilden, dean of the College of Nursing.
“We’re in a very nice space. The issue is, we can’t grow in that space.”
Short of space in its old home on UNL’s City Campus, UNMC moved its Lincoln nursing division to Commerce Court about 2½ years ago. The university has intended all along to move out of Commerce Court by the time its lease expires in 2012, Tilden said.
A new facility — priced at $16.3 million — would allow for more office and classroom space and more purchases of modern medical training equipment. It also would give nursing students an on-campus home and would ease safety concerns of parents who worry about their children walking through downtown to get back to their dorms after late-night study sessions.
“We need our own facility,” Tilden said. “We need a larger facility, one in which we can have the opportunity for (medical) simulation and 21st-century technology.
“And we’d be able to accept more students.”
Some students turned away from the Lincoln division get into one of the College of Nursing’s other divisions in Omaha, Kearney or Scottsbluff. Others wait and are eventually accepted at Lincoln.
But the nation’s nursing shortage is so severe — the average nurse is about 48, meaning many will retire right as aging baby boomers will need medical attention the most — UNMC can’t afford to delay accepting qualified applicants, said Kathleen Duncan, assistant dean of the Lincoln nursing campus.
The College of Nursing already has boosted enrollment by 30 percent in the past five years, and now, classrooms in Lincoln are at or past capacity, computer labs overflow and faculty members don’t have adequate office space, Duncan said.
Still, the college needs more space to train even more future nurses, she said.
“We feel an obligation to increase enrollment.”
Lincoln isn’t the only place being targeted for expansion. UNMC, in partnership with Northeast Community College, also hopes to open a nursing division in Norfolk by 2010.
A fundraising drive for that project, which aims for a better-trained medical workforce in rural Nebraska, officially kicks off today.
“We hope this becomes a reality,” Tilden said.
Each newly trained nurse, she said, means better health care for Nebraskans.
“We need more nurses.”
Reach Melissa Lee at 473-2682 or mlee@journalstar.com.
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Dean Tilden also puts a bright, but unrealistic focus on new nurses and their impact on health care for Nebraskans (she is looking for the $$). Nursing is a career that people get out of every day because of heavy workloads and poor staffing. The hospitals put on their best front, but in our current health care system, they are patient mills. I work for a week at a time without getting my unpaid lunch break or getting out of work on time. So newly trained nurses are valuable, but to have better health care for Nebraskans is an issue of how the system runs, not of newly trained nurses (who work hard to do their best but are still intensively learning for several years after graduation). To be competitive in the health care business, hospitals run their nursing staff as lean as possible. And I can assure you that at times, and hospitals will deny this but it is true, patient care takes a back seat to financial concerns. Changing that is the only thing that will better the care we all receive in those institutions. "