NC faces shortage of thousands of nurses. How Duke and Durham Tech plan to help.

Citing an ongoing national and statewide shortage of registered nurses, leaders from Duke University, its health system and Durham Technical Community College on Wednesday signed a $1.4 million partnership to train and retain the in-demand health professionals.

The partnership, described as a pilot program “to support nursing education and employment,” is intended to increase Durham Tech’s capacity to provide nursing education for its students and build a pathway to employment at Duke Health for them. It will also provide Duke nurses with professional development and teaching opportunities that are intended to increase retention in the profession.

“Today’s announcement is about a strategic partnership to increase the number of registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and certified nurse aides entering the workforce here at Duke Health Systems,” Durham Tech President J.B. Buxton said.

A 2021 report from consulting firm Mercer identified North Carolina as one of 29 states where, “if current trends hold,” the “demand for nursing talent” would not be met by 2026, with the report projecting that the state could face a shortage of more than 13,000 nurses that year. Other reports, including one published this April, have shown nationwide increases in the number of nurses leaving, or planning to leave, the profession since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

“This critical partnership with a highly valued community organization allows us to address this crisis by going upstream and developing a pipeline of talent to serve our community’s health care needs,” Duke University Health System CEO Craig Albanese said at Wednesday’s signing ceremony.

Sharing faculty to teach students

The program will establish a pipeline for Durham Tech students that guarantees an opportunity for employment with the Duke Health System, provided they complete their coursework and fulfill the necessary licensure requirements, Pamela Edwards, assistant vice president for education, practice and research at the health system, told The News & Observer.

Every nursing student at Durham Tech will have the opportunity to complete clinical rotations at Duke and learn from the nurses there, Durham Tech health and wellness dean Melissa Ockert told The N&O.

Duke will provide Durham Tech with direct and indirect financial support for the partnership program, including supplying the community college with training equipment, such as ventilators and an anesthesia machine, as well as opportunities for job shadowing and mentorship for students, Ockert said.

The partnership will also include a faculty sharing model, in which nurses from the Duke Health System will serve as Durham Tech faculty, providing instruction in the clinical, hands-on aspects of nursing at patients’ bedsides.

Existing Durham Tech nursing faculty will continue to take the lead on teaching students in the classroom, but additional support from nursing educators at Duke will “take some load off” Durham Tech faculty who are “overwhelmed” with the dual responsibility of providing classroom and clinical instruction, Ockert told The N&O.

“For us to do this innovative model, with my team serving as the didactic in the classroom and our staff nurses, who are the clinical experts, at the bedside, we’re really creating something completely different than anyone has done,” Edwards said.

That model, in which current nurses will teach prospective ones about hands-on and bedside care, is intended to both retain and recruit nurses to the Duke Health system and the profession overall.

Nurses feeling that they are able to spend adequate time at patients’ bedsides and providing hands-on care “is correlated to higher career and job satisfaction,” according to a report released this year by staffing company AMN Healthcare.

“We think it will make those nurses happier, to be able to teach,” Edwards said. “We’re a teaching institution, so everybody wants to teach these students.”

The new program will begin July 1, with nearly 400 Durham Tech students expected to participate annually.