{"id":666,"date":"2025-10-13T22:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T22:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/666\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T22:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T22:36:07","slug":"usf-st-petersburg-to-launch-a-new-four-year-nursing-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/666\/","title":{"rendered":"USF St. Petersburg to launch a new four-year nursing program"},"content":{"rendered":"

By 2035, Florida is expected to have a nursing shortage of nearly 60,000, according to\u00a0the Florida Hospital Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The University of South Florida St. Petersburg is launching a four-year nursing program that will welcome freshmen.<\/p>\n

Usha Menon, the dean of the\u00a0USF College of Nursing<\/a>, said it will help alleviate the staffing shortage in Florida.<\/p>\n

The program is expected to accept 85 students. However, there are only 70 seats for the higher-level courses, meaning there will be a cutoff after the second year, according to Menon.<\/p>\n

She said that\u2019s because of faculty challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge we have in nursing is that we also have a nurse faculty shortage,\u201d Menon said. \u201cAnd per our accreditation guidelines, we have to have a certain ratio of faculty to students in the clinical setting. So if I bring in an extra student, I have to have almost a half-time person hired.\u201d<\/p>\n

USF St. Petersburg began offering an\u00a0accelerated second-degree pathway<\/a>\u00a0in 2019 for students looking to make a\u00a0career change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The program is only four semesters long, but Menon said that about 94% to 97% of those students have passed the nursing licensure exam in the past five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cOurs is a very competitive program, which means we\u2019re bringing in really the best of the best students,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

USF has a close relationship with St. Petersburg hospitals, meaning students have opportunities for mentorships, internships and clinical training.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the physical location of our campus, right here in the hospital district, we\u2019re very keen to knit our campus together with Orlando Health, with Johns Hopkins All Children\u2019s and other local hospitals,\u201d said vice provost for academic affairs Thomas Smith.<\/p>\n

Menon said the idea for a four-year program started after university officials spoke with people at local hospitals about how they can get students to stay in the area and fill the need for nurses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have multiple hospital partners in the St. Pete area who have been staunch supporters for us,\u201d Menon said. \u201cThey give our students scholarships. They give us many clinical placements, hire our students. And so after talking to them, we identified this as a gap, maybe bringing the students in early and bringing them in as a four-year student, where they have a chance to get to know the community, they have a chance to get to know the campus, and they\u2019re really kind of committed to staying in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students will be taking classes across the St. Petersburg campus, including the\u00a0Children\u2019s Research Institute<\/a>, known as \u201cThe Band-Aid building\u201d due to the\u00a0art installation<\/a>\u00a0on the side of a building.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of fun because they get to try out all these things with mannequins before they actually go touch humans,\u201d Menon said. \u201cAnd we have some real state-of-the-art equipment with virtual reality and mannequins that will follow you with their eyes and respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabriel Velasquez Neira is a Rush Family Radio News intern at WUSF, the Tampa Bay area\u2019s NPR station.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By 2035, Florida is expected to have a nursing shortage of nearly 60,000, according to\u00a0the Florida Hospital Association.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","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=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}