Written by Gold Meadows and KVAL.com Staff
LANE COUNTY, Ore. — Bushnell University’s plans to double its nursing program numbers gets a boost of more than $4 million dollars in grant funding.
Staff in the School of Nursing say most of those nurses will stay local beefing up Lane County’s healthcare workforce.
According to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), overall, the nursing workforce has grown by just over 15 percent since 2020; but only about 74 percent of the state’s licensed registered nurses were practicing in 2023.
OHA says the state’s education programs only graduate enough nurses to fill about 72 percent of spots available each year.
That’s where Bushnell University’s School of Nursing hopes to step up to shift those numbers.
The school brought in three major grants between April and December to expand its Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ASBN) program.
ADDITIONAL COVERAGE | Bushnell University receives $500k to recruit, train nurses amid Lane County shortage
“It’s really addressing the lifespan of growing our healthcare workforce. It’s not a quick fix. Educating a student in the field of nursing takes time. It takes money, and it takes expertise, so we’re trying to take this setting and make sure that we’re training our students in the most culturally conscious ways to provide really equitable healthcare,” said Corynn Gilbert, director of development, Bushnell University. “The community is really coming together to support our efforts to expand the healthcare workforce.”
It’s money that’s backed the university’s design of a state-of-the-art nursing simulation lab including equipment, training mannequins, and technology.
Funds will also allow for enhanced recruitment and training along with a nurse mentorship model for new graduates and early career nurses who work in PeaceHealth Oregon network settings.
The recent grant funds have allowed Bushnell to double its capacity in its nursing program from 32 to 64.
Eighty percent of those graduates will stay in Oregon. Sixty percent will stay in Lane County.
“We are getting some students from out of state to come here and who do return to their home states, but most of our students are home grown, and they’re staying in Oregon,” said Gilbert.
One of the partnering organizations through the latest grant that came in late December is PeaceHealth.
Last year, the hospital announced the opening of an inpatient psychiatric hospital, and they’ll break ground next month on an inpatient rehabilitation hospital, so time and volume are of the essence.
“We are growing and needing more nurses for sure. Our mission and our values align very well with Bushnell, and so as nursing students are going through their programs, they’re already being introduced to the mission and the values that PeaceHealth has,” said Alicia Beymer, vice president of operations, PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center. “The other benefit of partnering with Bushnell is one, it means that we’re recruiting from locally generally, and hopefully with the goal of retaining nurses in our community.”
“PeaceHealth, as the biggest employer, the biggest hospital system in the region, does capture a lot of our graduates, but we have students going to McKenzie-Willamette. We have students going to outpatient facilities. We have students who feel called to work in the elementary schools as school nurses,” said Gilbert. “The way we rotate our students through the system, they have a chance to be exposed to all types of nursing including community health.”
The ASBN program takes students at the bachelors level who’ve already has an undergraduate degree in a related field such as biology and moves them through the program within 12 months.
The program gets a new cohort of up to 32 students every six months.
Gilbert says they’ve graduated five cohorts since 2022, and they have a 100 percent passing rate on the National Council Licensure Exam (NCLEX) the test required to practice as a registered nurse in the United States.