Troops to Nurse Teachers Program

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

With thousands of qualified students denied admission into the country’s nursing programs, earlier this month Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) led a bipartisan effort to adopt a six year pilot program aimed at encouraging nurses leaving the military to become nurse educators. The Troops to Nurse Teachers program was amended to the Senate’s FY 2007 National Defense Authorization Act which passed on June 15, 2006. Durbin’s initiative is based on the “Troops to Teachers” program created in 1994, which has trained 14,000 former service members to be math and science teachers.

With a projected shortfall of one million nurses by 2020, Durbin stated that a program like Troops to Nurse Teacher offers an innovative solution that will help place more qualified nurses in faculty positions, which will in turn, increase the pool of nurses sought by civilian and military facilities. Durbin stated that, “The military faces the same difficulty in recruitment and retention of nurses as civilian medical facilities. If we are going to address the nursing shortage over the long term, and ensure that Americans have the quality nursing care they deserve, we must increase the number of nursing faculty members.”

The program encompasses two activities: traditional assistance, and a scholarship program.

Since the House bill does not contain the Troops to Nurse Teachers provision, it will be one of the many items to be discussed in conference.

http://durbin.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=257099

http://www.vote-smart.org/speech_detail.php?speech_id=181440&keyword=&phrase=&contain=