TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Florida\u2019s nursing shortage is far from over, even as hospitals across the state make progress in filling vacant positions.<\/p>\n
According to the Florida Hospital Association, hospitals have reduced nursing vacancy rates by 26% over the past two years. However, some positions remain particularly difficult to fill. Emergency department nurses have a turnover rate of about 20%, while nearly 80% of certified nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses leave their positions within two years or fewer.<\/p>\n
With Florida\u2019s population continuing to grow and age, the demand for nurses is expected to increase significantly over the next decade.<\/p>\n
The University of South Florida is taking steps to expand the state\u2019s nursing pipeline with a major addition to its College of Nursing. The university has opened a 42,000-square-foot expansion supported in part by a $33 million state investment.<\/p>\n
The expansion is expected to help USF graduate 500 additional nursing students.<\/p>\n
The new space includes clinical training areas, learning labs, and a nursing simulation lab developed in collaboration with Tampa General Hospital.<\/p>\n
The investment could provide a boost for hospitals throughout the Tampa Bay area, including AdventHealth, which is also working to recruit and retain nurses.<\/p>\n
AdventHealth Chief Nursing Officer Stormy Dulovich said local universities are doing a good job increasing the pool of nursing candidates, but she emphasized that recruiting is only part of the challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a facility and a company we focus on retaining our teams, making sure that the work environment they have is great so that it\u2019s attractive to other nurses,\u201d Dulovich said.<\/p>\n
AdventHealth is also working on strategies to keep nurses in the profession, including increasing base pay, offering tuition assistance, and creating career-ladder programs. The hospital also has entry-level positions that can provide pathways into its nursing education programs.<\/p>\n
The need for additional nurses is expected to remain significant. The Florida Hospital Association projects that the state could face a shortage of as many as 60,000 nurses by 2035.<\/p>\n
Expanding nursing education programs will not eliminate the projected shortage overnight, but each additional training program and expansion increases the number of nurses entering the workforce.<\/p>\n
The question now is whether those programs can expand quickly enough to meet Florida\u2019s growing need for nurses over the next decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Florida\u2019s nursing shortage is far from over, even as hospitals across the state make progress…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,558,6075,276,2635,2287,115,135,137,136,278],"class_list":["post-371276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-health-and-medicine","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-jason-lanning","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}