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UT-Arlington Plans to Double Nursing-School Students

Need likely to rise

Nationally, the nursing shortage has eased because the economy has forced some retired nurses back into the work force. Others who planned to retire are holding back, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Some part-time nurses have gone full time, and some full-time nurses are working extra shifts, the association reports.

At Cook Children’s Medical Center, 75 nursing graduates were hired in June 2008, compared with 30 this year because of low turnover and vacancy rates, Vice President of Nursing Paula J. Webb wrote in an e-mail.

But the need for nurses is expected to accelerate again as the economy recovers and baby boomers age.

In 2008, about 7,900 registered nurses graduated from Texas colleges and universities. By 2013, the state will need twice that many, said Burns, of TCU.

“All of the graduates last year out of our baccalaureate programs had positions if they wanted them,” Burns said.

Job security is a major reason Jackie Melgar, 21, of Arlington said she’s studying nursing at UT-Arlington. She was among about a half-dozen students at the Smart Hospital on Tuesday learning to insert catheters. She said she had always been interested in healthcare but didn’t want to spend the years in medical school needed to become a doctor. She worked at a pharmacy but decided that it was not for her, either.

“This is something I can do,” she said of nursing. “So far I haven’t changed my mind.”

Hiep Nguyen, 28, of Fort Worth said he couldn’t get a job after he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of North Texas in Denton. So he returned to get a bachelor’s degree in medical technology, then worked for two years at a firm that tested blood, urine and other samples. But he enrolled in UT-Arlington’s nursing program because he wanted human interaction and the chance to help people fight disease.

“To be able to help them ease some of that pain, I think it’s priceless,” he said.

Jayne Cummins, 53, of Arlington, who works as a licensed vocational nurse at Texas Health Arlington hospital, now wants to be a registered nurse.

“It’s about caring for other people,” she said.

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