Scholarships for work commitment?

I'm in Missouri and our Dept of Health offers money in exchange for work at either any hospital in the state or any clinic in a county of need. I'd look at your state's dept of health website for something similar.

I recently spoke to a friend who is senior executive in a major hospital system. The Affordable Care Act is impacting hospitals in many ways beyond what is in the news. One impact is nurse retention in hospitals that are choosing to hire at lower salaries so as not to totally gut staffing levels. He was saying that they were dealing with a high percentage of new nurses that would work for them just long enough to get the experience necessary for a higher paying job elsewhere. He said that new nurses would start looking around about 6 months after hire.

It sounded like there may be a salary reset coming for nurses. Experienced nurses filling positions of greater responsibility aren't going to see their salaries matched if they move on to another health system. So maybe they are staying where they are and blocking advancement of newer nurses. Maybe new nurses will not be starting their career at the same (adjusted for inflation) salary as experienced nurses did.

There are some major reimbursement issues administrators are dealing with in the Affordable Care Act. So the choice apparently is to gut staffing or to reduce salaries to maintain staffing levels. I'm not an expert and I've only talked to one person with inside knowledge of the issues and I don't know if his perspective is shared by others.

Since I want to practice nursing among under-served populations I am more than happy to take lower pay in exchange for my tuition being paid. It's not as if I'm going to be rolling in money working with under-served populations anyway.

4thgenrn sounds like an awesome opportunity! Where do you live maybe I need to relocate there lol

I know this post is pretty old but I was wondering what is everyone's locations.