One in every of CUNY’s contributions to the vitality of New York Metropolis is our function educating nurses for the town’s well being care workforce. Our nursing applications graduate 1,800 nurses a yr, about half the brand new nurses employed by the town’s hospitals, clinics and medical services. It’s a powerful quantity however the rising demand for nurses in our metropolis and state means CUNY must do extra — and we’re.
This month, we opened a brand new $95 million Nursing Training, Analysis and Apply Heart at Lehman Faculty within the Bronx that may allow Lehman’s extremely ranked nursing applications to triple their capability to coach new nurses. The brand new middle, funded primarily by the state, will lengthen CUNY’s attain as an important pipeline for the town’s well being care sector, and it’ll broaden entry to alternatives within the quickly rising area. In all these methods, the brand new Lehman nursing middle represents what CUNY does finest — lifting New York.
Lehman’s nurse coaching middle is simply the newest funding in CUNY by our state and metropolis to strengthen New York’s public well being infrastructure. In November, I joined Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams in unveiling the grasp plan for the approaching Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) at Kips Bay, a profession and schooling hub for the life sciences. This transformation of Hunter Faculty’s Brookdale campus will present top-of-the-line services for applications at three CUNY faculties, together with the Hunter-Bellevue College of Nursing, which was based practically 70 years in the past and is now the town’s largest public establishment of nursing schooling.
A Rising Want
Nursing shortages have endured throughout the nation because the pandemic, and the state of affairs is very acute in New York. The state is projected to have a scarcity of practically 40,000 nurses by 2030 — a niche that will probably be most consequential in communities the place there are already long-standing well being care inequities. The brand new Lehman nursing middle is a crucial a part of efforts to handle the disaster by increasing nurse-training alternatives in public larger schooling.
The ability additionally aligns with a legislation signed by Governor Hochul final yr to ease the nursing scarcity by allowing nursing college students to finish as much as one-third of their medical coaching by means of simulation expertise. The Lehman nursing middle options state-of-the-art tools together with 22 robotic affected person simulators that may be programmed to copy a whole lot of medical circumstances. There are coaching rooms together with one which simulates a metropolis condominium the place future nurses will learn to present residence care to sufferers with restricted mobility.
The CUNY Method
The Lehman growth is a shining instance of CUNY’s lengthy custom as a frontrunner of nursing schooling in New York. As we speak, CUNY presents greater than 50 undergraduate, graduate and credit-bearing superior certificates applications in nursing at 13 faculties. To broaden hiring pathways for our college students and help the profession development of medical nurses, we associate with native well being techniques and suppliers in addition to well being care staff’ union 1199SEIU and the Mayor’s Workplace of Expertise and Workforce Growth.
I’m additionally proud to say that our constellation of applications continues to function a essential pipeline for brand spanking new and advanced-practice nurses in addition to an unparalleled driver of range within the area.
Practically 70% of CUNY nursing college students come from underrepresented teams, which enormously exceeds statewide and nationwide averages. That is essential not solely to our mission of increasing profession alternatives for New Yorkers of all backgrounds however to our dedication to traditionally underserved communities. Analysis reveals {that a} extra various well being care workforce can result in improved entry and outcomes for individuals of coloration.
Many CUNY college students contribute to their communities, and few do it extra selflessly than our nursing college students. Through the pandemic, 2,500 of them stepped as much as assist help workers on the entrance strains at state-run medical services. Greater than 1,000 took half within the NYC Well being + Hospitals vaccine rollout. We had been proud that Lehman nursing alumna Sandra Lindsay — now vp for public well being advocacy at Northwell Well being — was the primary American to obtain a COVID vaccine in December 2020. And that one other alum, Patricia Cummings, who earned her nursing diploma at Medgar Evers Faculty, administered the vaccine to Vice President Kamala Harris.
CUNY’s nursing applications are a key participant within the growth of well being fairness in New York, and it’s with the continued help of our companions in state and metropolis authorities that we can prepare and deploy the nurses that the town will want within the years forward.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The Metropolis College of New York (CUNY), the biggest city public college system in the USA.
