Quinn Champions Program CUNY to Use City Nurses To Train More Students

Quinn Champions Program
CUNY to Use City Nurses To Train More Students

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood-James ON THE CRITICAL LIST: City University of New York Executive Vice Chancellor Alexandra Logue says that doubling the number of nursing graduates within its system hasn't kept up with demand over the past five years, leading City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (right) to back an initiative under which nurses employed in city hospitals will be deployed to teach CUNY nursing students.

In an effort to reduce the city's chronic nurse shortage, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn March 4 announced a partnership between city-based hospitals and the City University of New York that will send experienced nurses to CUNY schools so that they can train more nursing students, potentially providing 500 additional nurses over the next five years.

Ms. Quinn said there were qualified students ready to be educated at CUNY schools, just not enough spaces to teach them all every year because of a lack of faculty.

'Turned Away 575 in '08'

"Each year, 1,600 nurses graduate from CUNY schools throughout the city," Ms. Quinn told reporters at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. "Most of those students stay here in the five boroughs. But last year there were an additional 575 qualified applicants to CUNY who wanted to enter the nursing program who had to be turned away."

The plan would take five to 10 senior nurses from hospitals in the city and have them be guest faculty at CUNY for a year. It would require only "a small amount of city resources," Ms. Quinn estimated, from $500,000 to $1 million.

"Over the last five years, CUNY has more than doubled the total number of graduates of its nursing programs, but even that greatly increased number is insufficient to satisfy New York City's need for new nurses," said Alexandra Logue, CUNY's Executive Vice Chancellor. "The additional resources to be provided through the City Council will help us to continue to expand our enrollments in these critical health programs."

'Will Need 7,000 More'

Public and private city hospitals employ about 63,000 nurses, 17 percent of whom are more than 55 years old. "Due to the growth of population in New York City, it will need 7,000 more nurses by 2020 than it is currently projected to have," said Ms. Quinn. "What this means is that if the current trajectory continues, New York's nursing problem, if we don't intervene, will only get worse."

"Thousands of potential RNs are being turned away from nursing school each year due to the lack of nurse educators to teach them," said New York State Nursing Association Associate Director Kathleen Nowak. "We desperately need educators to increase the ranks of registered nurses who can deliver quality patient care. Until we correct the source we can't expect to resolve the nursing shortage."

"This is a national crisis that has long been in need of a long-term solution as the population ages and the nursing workforce shrinks each year through retirement and attrition," said Service Employees International Union Local 1199 President George Gresham.