Alexia Green, R.N., Ph.D., FAAN, dean of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) Anita Thigpen Perry School of Nursing, announces the receipt of a $1 million grant from the Texas Workforce Commission. The grant will help research, develop and provide innovative practices for curriculum development, training as well as increase student capacity in nursing schools to address the shortage of bachelor’s level registered nurses in the state.
The grant was awarded by geographic region and in partnership with Texas A&M Health Science Center (Central Texas), University of Texas at Tyler (East Texas), Texas Woman’s University (Gulf Coast), Dallas/Ft. Worth Hospital Council (North Texas) and University of Texas at El Paso (Upper Rio Grande). Each region has between three and 22 schools participating in the grant.
Nursing leaders from 18 states including Texas earlier this year gathered in Baltimore for the 2009 Nursing Education Capacity Summit to not only address the nursing shortage, but to help create solutions.
Green led the Texas Team in creating a strategic plan. The plan identified three main goals for the state’s nursing schools: support growth and accountability, develop regional academic partnerships, and leverage new partnerships.
“All of our communities need to take note of this critical shortage of nurses and the need for area nursing schools to produce more graduates,” Green said. “This plan is really dependent upon each of us to take action – our futures depend on it. Each of us can make a difference.”
The Nursing Education Capacity Summit was sponsored by the Center to Champion Nursing in America, the AARP Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Labor.
