IU Health Starke Hospital is helping prepare the next generation of nurses by allowing college nursing students to shadow registered nurses at the hospital.
“We are having two clinical rotations each semester and these are usually second or third year Med-Surg students that are coming,” said Clinical Manager of Patient Care Services, Janet Gillon. “We’re very excited about the relationship because it’s something that brings about the autonomy of nursing – bringing them forward from where they are in their school curriculum into the actual working patient care centers.”
Gillon said we have a nursing shortage in the United States.
“There really is a shortage of nurses and sometimes it depends on the areas. For example, here we seem to manage our nursing staff rather well, but I would think in places like Indianapolis and larger cities, there’s a shortage of nurses. They do have nursing pools for nurses to work for, but it is really important to actually have a flow of nurses as the population is aging. We have a great portion of nurses that will be retiring.”
Gillon said hopefully some of the nursing students will remain at IU Health Starke Hospital once they finish their training.
“They are able to utilize their skills that they’re learning in school and applying them to where their career is going to take them. It’s a very positive thing. By having the nursing care programs here, we strengthen the core of nursing and we have new nurses feeding into the health care system. There’s usually a nursing shortage so by doing this, we have actually built a rapport that can guarantee the flow of new nurses into our health care system.”
