To help relieve a statewide nursing shortage, Durham Tech and Duke University are taking action.
The groups are partnering to create the Nursing Talent Pipeline with the aims of enhancing learning and career readiness for future nurses. Nurses at Duke Health will serve as faculty, helping to teach clinical instruction to students at Durham Tech.
“We can’t solve this problem, number one, independently,” said Melissa Ockert, Dean of Health and Wellness at Durham Tech. “We’ve got to work together. And number two, we can’t solve it in the ways that we thought we could solve it in the past.
“So,” she continued, “we really felt strongly that we had to create something that would not only be innovative and address the issues sort of at state, but also possibly serve as a statewide model.”
Okert is working with others to create the nursing talent pipeline and take action against the nursing labor shortage. Ockert has been at the college for 23 years. An agreement of the collaboration was signed in June signifying the commencement of the pipeline.
“From the academic side, one of our challenges has been the nursing faculty,” said Okert. “So being able to attract people to come into nursing positions because they are going to make probably a lower salary than they would in the clinical area.”
Ockert said the program lost a lot of nurses due to COVID, retirement, changing careers, and those moving to travel nurse positions.
The pipeline will try to provide more incentives for nursing students to stay in the area by allowing for more opportunities like instructing at the bedside. It will also aim to recruit and retain more nursing students by providing more academic support like mentorship, feedback, and other resources.
The assistant vice president for nursing education for Duke University Health, Pam Edwards, shared part of the plan.
“We’re gonna focus on the nursing pipeline,” she said, “but we’re also gonna focus on those team members that are around nurses, surgical technologists, nursing care assistants, and paramedics.”
This November, a $112.7 million bond was passed by Durham and it will go toward building two state-of-the-art facilities for healthcare and life science training. Most of the programs and courses for nursing students will take place in this building in a simulated hospital space.
“This building is going to allow us to train our students in even better ways, better prepare them for the workforce, have updated modernized equipment and simulation spaces that Duke is generously providing some equipment for us as part of this partnership,” said Ockert. “As well as, some faculty time, some clinical faculty time, a couple of positions.”
Edwards said the pipeline will also focus on increasing diversity among students and nurses.
“We really want a healthcare workforce that reflects our community. And we don’t have that right now. We’re not completely there, but the students at Durham Tech are incredibly diverse, race, ethnicity, gender. This is why we just wanna tap into these students, and lift them up,” said Edwards.
Edwards and Ockert said they are passionate about this project and look forward to seeing it come to fruition.Ockert especially is looking forward to the impact this program will have on faculty and students.
Ockert said, “I think all of us need this opportunity to get recharged and excited about what we’re doing. And I’m hoping that that is gonna be an opportunity for our state and the community college system to look at ways to do this because our community college faculty are so incredibly valuable.”
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