Anyone who has read my recent posts knows that I am very frustrated with the lack of jobs, due to the SURPLUS of nurses in the panhandle.
Well get this... I got a card in the mail from a local university informing me that the school just received a 2 million dollar grant from The Dept of Labor as part of Bush's Nurse Reinvestment Act.
I attended the college's informational seminar about the grant program
The grant will pay all tuition, books, fees, and childcare for 20 diploma or ADN RNs to get a Masters in Nursing Education.
Each of the 20 students also gets a free laptop computer AND a $60,000. stipend to be dispersed over the course of the 3 yr program.
Each student must sign an agreement stating they will pursue employment as a nursing educator in the State of Texas for 3 years after graduating.
The college plans to expand their nursing program to accept more students and kick out more new grads. The college expects to hire 4 or 5 of the grads to be instructors in their expanded program. The Nursing program director said that nurses who graduate from the program may be required to leave the area to become nurse educators in other parts of Texas, as they do not anticipate that there will be enough educator jobs for all the grads.
Several hundred nurses attended the seminar. The talk among the nurses was about how there are already no jobs in the area, due to too many nurses, now the college is going to expand so there will be even more nurses here, when there are already too many.
Several nurses were saying how they had been trying to get in to the local hospitals, but could not get hired. One said to me "Since I can't get a job here, I've become a traveler. Have you ever considered traveling?"
I had to laugh when I told her that I also became a traveler, because I couldn't get a job here.
Other nurses spoke about how they had to commute 100 or more miles to other towns to work, since there are no jobs here.
Part of the application requirements for the grants require that applicants submit 2 letters from supervisors. Several nurses spoke up saying "I'm not employed; I can't find a job. Can I submit a letter from a former supervisor?"
Others who did have jobs were talking about how they were only getting 20-30 hrs of work a week, as all the local hospitals and nursing homes have too many nurses on staff.
So, this is how our government is is using our tax dollars to address the nursing "shortage."
Only 16 colleges/universities in the nation will get grants in this program. And they picked the nurse-overloaded panhandle as one of the 16 locations?
2 million of our tax dollars are going to be used to expand nursing programs and create more nursing instructors and new grads in an area that is saturated with nurses.
