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BOSTON (State House News Service) - Amidst a nursing shortage plaguing health care institutions across the state, Mass General Brigham and UMass Boston announced Thursday that they are investing $20 million into a program meant to recruit nursing students from underrepresented communities.
The $20 million investment -- $10 million from the hospital system and $10 million from UMass Boston -- will go toward expanding the college's Clinical Leadership Collaborative for Diversity in Nursing. Students recruited into this program during their clinical rotations become eligible for employment by the Mass General Brigham system hospitals.
Since the program started in 2008, cohorts of about 20 students have graduated each year. With the new investment, cohorts will scale up to an average of 80 students per year, said Mass General Brigham Chief Human Resources Officer Rose Sheehan.
"This will really help us expand our pipeline, help us really invest in our communities, because most of the people who are going to UMass Boston live in and around the Boston area, and also increase the diversity of our workforce, our nursing workforce, which we believe is important that our workforce reflects the diversity of the community of our patients," Sheehan said.
UMass Boston is the most diverse university in New England, and the Manning College of Nursing and Health Sciences is the fastest-growing college within the university, according to UMass. Of the approximately 1,800 students in the nursing college, 20 percent are Black, 14 percent Latinx, and 13 percent Asian American Pacific Islander.
"I am deeply appreciative to have partners in Massachusetts like UMass Boston and Mass General Brigham working with us to address the nationwide health care workforce shortage," said Secretary of Health and Human Services Kate Walsh. "Having a diverse health care workforce that truly represents the population they serve leads to better understanding, better decision making, and better health outcomes for patients."
Hospitals around Massachusetts -- and the country -- are experiencing major staffing gaps.
In fiscal year 2019, hospitals spent $204 million on temporary staff; in fiscal 2022, they spent $1.52 billion, a 610 percent increase, according to a recent Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association survey.
Hospitals around the state are also offering signing bonuses and retention packages to keep employees, MHA says.
Another MHA report in fall 2022 called the health care system in Massachusetts "in crisis," estimating 19,000 acute care hospital positions were empty in the state.
"Over five years, 400 students are going to be recruited to complete the program, and we have a shortage of nurses in Massachusetts and beyond, and we see this as an opportunity to expand what we're doing at UMass Boston in nursing," said UMass President Marty Meehan. "We are committed at UMass to expanding the number of nurses we can produce as quickly as we can, and in some cases, it's going to take a commitment of revenue."
The additional funding will also support the creation of a behavioral health equity certificate for program participants, as demand for behavioral health care has skyrocketed following the beginning of the pandemic.
A release from UMass said the $20 million investment was "inspired by" Robert and Donna Manning's record-breaking $50 million donation to the university in 2021, $15 million of which went to the UMass Boston School of Nursing.
"We're making a choice, an intentional choice to invest in this partnership, because we believe it'll be good for our patients, and we believe it'll be good for our communities," Sheehan said. "When you invest here, you have to not invest somewhere else, right? So it's a tradeoff. But we feel that this is the right tradeoff. We've been in partnership with UMass with the program since 2008, so instead of wondering: will this work? We know it'll work."
Written By Sam Drysdale/SHNS
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