ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Did you know right now there are more than a million nursing openings across the country?
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing the shortage that affects hospitals and retirement communities.
It’s only going to get worse as Baby Boomers start to retire. In Northern Virginia, a group of retirement communities has a strategy: Invest in nursing students.
We followed nurse Fatmata Jallah as she made her rounds at the Goodwin House retirement community.
Nursing is a job she’s done her whole life in a way, all the way back to her childhood in Sierra Leone.
“I was taking care of my grandmother when I was a little girl,” she smiled.
Jallah said when her grandmother got sick and went to the hospital she saw the work nurses do up close.
“The care and compassion the nurses gave to her that made me to decide I want to be a nurse when I grow up,” she said
She did it. She’s worked as a nurse at Goodwin Living in Alexandria for years. But the last few she says have been overwhelming at times.
“Since the pandemic we’ve been having little shortages,” she said.
“The situation is we are going to see a lot more retirements and people coming to retirement and assisted living facilities,” Rob Liebreich -CEO of Goodwin Living said. “We won’t have as many workers working that.”
Liebreich said there’s already more than a million nurse openings across the country. At Goodwin, they have about 100 openings a year..
“It’s a lot,” he said. “We are trying to find good people, so it’s not just about finding anyone.”
That led Liebrich and leaders from other retirement communities to look at Northern Virginia Community College. Each year, NOVA’s program has more than 500 applicants, but only has space for around 80 students.
“We have this nursing need, there’s qualified applicants that could go to nursing school, what has to happen for that to occur? He asked.
Goodwin Living partnered with other communities to raise almost $500,000 to start a Nursing fund. The fund will sponsor around 50 more spots in NOVA’s Licensed Practical Nurse program. The LPN program will take about 13 months to complete. With the LPN they will be able to work in retirement communities.
“It's going to take that private-public partnership to really come around this issue,” Liebrich said.
With the hope that this can start a pipeline to address the long-term shortage in Northern Virginia.