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NASHVILLE- Belmont University and Dr. Debra
Wollaber, Dean of the Belmont University College of Health
Sciences and the School of Nursing, hosted the Tennessee
Center for Nursing’s statewide conference Thursday
in the Massey Board Room. The Tennessee Center for Nursing
organized the summit, bringing together leaders in nursing
education, to hear presentations from officials from Nevada,
New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia on how they plan
to increase nursing education capacity in their own states.
The purpose of the summit was to bring faculty from Tennessee's
nursing schools and members of the Nursing Education Master
Plan Steering Committee together to learn from the experience
of other states, to initiate discussion on what nursing
schools across Tennessee can do to produce more nurses and
avert the emerging nursing shortage, and what additional
resources are needed for increasing faculty and other capacity-building
needs.
Presenting Nursing Education Capacity-Building Plans were
Nancy Bridges, RN, CCM, nurse executive from the Nevada
Hospital Association; Fran A’Hern Smith, DNSc, RN,
president of the New Mexico Center for Nursing Excellence;
Billy Bevill, MSN, RN, associate director of the North Carolina
Center for Nursing; and JoAnne Kirk Henry, EdD, RN, associate
professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of
Nursing.
Following presentations, the second meeting of the Nursing
Education Master Plan Steering Committee convened to evaluate
and discuss the findings from the other states and determine
how certain initiatives may be implemented in Tennessee.
"In the face of a looming shortage of nurses in our
state, Tennessee schools of nursing turned away hundreds
of qualified nursing applicants last fall due to a lack
of educational resources to expand student enrollment,”
said Ann P. Duncan, MPH, RN, executive director of the Tennessee
Center for Nursing. “It behooves Tennessee to look
at how other states are dealing with increasing educational
capacity and hear the 'lessons learned' from these states.”
The work of the Nursing Education Master Plan Steering Committee
is funded by a grant from the Tennessee Hospital Association’s
Center for Health Workforce Development to the Tennessee
Center for Nursing. The steering committee’s purpose
is to develop a Nursing Education Master Plan to double
the number of nursing school graduates by the year 2010.
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