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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Advancing Health. Indiana faces a shortage of approximately 4,300 nurses today. We hear how a remarkable example of public and private sector generosity has combined to train and retain the nurses Hoosiers rely on. Hello, friends. I'm Tom Hetterle, senior communications specialist with the American Hospital association. And I'm very pleased today to welcome two guests who'll tell us how Indiana has jump started its effort to, to train new nurses and close the gap between demand and supply in the state. Denzel Ross is president of Indiana University Health South Region and Eric Coyne is chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College. That is in Bloomington. Gentlemen, thank you both for joining me on Advancing Health today.
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B
Great to be here.
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C
Thanks, Tom.
- [00:50]
A
Well, let's jump in. Eric, maybe we could start with you. Ivy Tech Community College's Bloomington campus has been a significant pipeline for the nursing workforce in southern Indiana for some time and, and now you've got some resources to become an even bigger one. So in a nutshell, what's changed?
- [01:05]
C
Well, the collaboration with IU Health is a huge part. They've provided grant money in the past and continue to support us. We've been able to expand and move our nursing facilities. We've renovated and just really built up. We've doubled our bed spaces for training. We've added more simulation labs. So we've really created the, you know, the educational capacity. And then we worked really closely with IU Health on the clinical opportunities. Where, where do those lie? Where are those? And we found frankly that we've really maximized our opportunity throughout the course of the day. We're, we're trying some other things. We're still trying to find, you know, that kind of go that we were always going the last mile to find those, those extra clinical opportunities. But really the opportunity was and continues to be in the evening and on weekends and so really excited. Last year we launched a pilot program for 20 transitioning nurses, so LPNs or military medics or paramedics to transition into the RN program. So it's a one year program and we moved it to the evening because there frankly there was no education happening at that time. So we had capacity in the evening. So we're really excited about that program. The first cohort will be wrapping up this summer and we'll obviously be taking all the data from that and seeing how it did and seeing where we can grow. And as a result of that, we've actually found that we can grow our LPN day program. It's interesting how the things kind of, you know, one thing leads to another. And we're real excited with the collaboration we've had with IU Health and the opportunities that it's presented. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we've had some generous donors who really supported us along the way.
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A
Yeah, I'd like to follow up on that a little bit, especially from IU Health's point of view. From where you stand, Denzel, what's driving some of the philanthropy and the support here? Have you been hearing from residents in the area that there just weren't enough nurses and it was getting to be a problem and something had to be done? Or really, what was the impetus behind this?
- [03:09]
B
Yeah, you know, this topic of the nursing shortage has been a national topic for quite some time, and we hear it very presently. So in. In Indiana, and specifically in the south region, and through this transformational gift from the Fergusons, who are longtime Bloomington residents, they were motivated through the idea that through their investments, coupled with IU Health's support, Indiana can train more nurses by building on the strong foundation that's already in place. We have a number of hospitals across the state, and we all struggle, like our competitors and other health care systems with how do we find nurses. With that continuing to be a challenge. With the support of these gifts coming in, we are now able to say, let's do something about it. Let's own the problem, and let's start to build and improve our pipeline. I think the inception of this investment and other investments with Ivy Tech, the Fergusons, their connection has been through their friendship with another philanthropist, Lee J. Martin, whose transformational gift to Ivy Tech Bloomington established the Lee J. Martin School of Nursing, and that included early support for the nursing program. Now, with this donation, this gift, we're able, as Eric mentioned, to take that, expand it even further, and really focus on building our own pipeline over the course of the next coming years.
- [04:45]
A
If I understand it right, a big part of the focus of the whole thing is to keep it local. In a sense, you want to train people who are. Who are Hoosiers ideally, and who want to stay in the state and live their lives there and plant their roots there. So really, maybe both of you could address how is that working out and why is it important to sort of keep everything, you know, keep it in the backyard to the extent that you can.
- [05:07]
C
You know, we're a community college and we support our community, and we see that 85 plus percent of our students across the board tend to stay in our region. And so as we think about the nursing shortage in particular. And I know this was top of mind for the Fergusons as they were thinking about this gift. How do we incentivize, how do we keep those students in our region? What can we do to, you know, provide support for them? And, and this gift, obviously is really going to transform how we're able to do that and how we're able to support them. It's a two part gift. One part is on the operational side. It'll help offset salaries and equipment, and another side of that is scholarships. And so it's going to really help grow some of the support we can give our students in the region. And I think if they can stay here and work here, obviously there's a kind of connection. My mom was a longtime nurse in Bloomington. I was born here. My dad was on the Monroe County Hospital Board for a long time. So it's a real personal thing for me. But it's really cool when you walk in and you're being treated by someone you know, it is just such a difference when you walk in and it's someone, you know, you knew, their parents or even their grandparents. How cool is that? That's the community we want to inspire here. I mean, I still hear from people who tell me about, my mom treated them, and that is pretty cool. And so if we can continue that for generations and make that sustainable and financially feasible, not just for them, but also for our local medical suppliers and hospitals, then that's terrific.
- [06:41]
B
And I think that's the beauty of who we are. At IU Health in Indiana, and particularly in the south region, we have a number of critical access hospitals that help and support those rural areas. And then within our Bloomington facility, I think that's what really gives the impact to who we are and how we serve our community. A lot of what Eric mentioned is what we pride ourselves on. It's really and truly the community serving the community. So it's not uncommon. Like Eric mentioned, that you go into one of our hospitals and you see a friendly face, whether that be the provider, the nurse app, the team member greeting you at the door. Those are your neighbors. Those are the people that your kids play soccer with. Those are the people that you spend time, you walk into a restaurant and you see them. And so I think that's the beauty of this, is that from our perspective, we get to grow that pipeline. But as a healthcare provider, we're not just talking about filling the gap, we're also talking about retention. And we know if we have staff, particularly here in this scenario, Nurses who train here, who are from here, there's a better chance that they stay here in the long run. And that just gives us stability in our recruitment, it gives us stability in our outcomes. Because now we could build and grow programs. The nursing staff knows, the physician staff and all the other providers. And it just builds a great outcome, quality outcome for who we are and how we serve the community. One other thing we are also really excited about, we are very conscious of the fact that as a new nurse coming out of your educational program, it could be somewhat scary going into the field to, to care for patients. And for that reason, we have a really strong and robust first year nursing residency program that is really focused on how do we help and support that first time nurse transition from the educational space to how they become a caregiver. And so we're really proud of that, really excited about having more and more nurses go through that. And we have seen that be a really vital piece of our ability to retain nurses and get them to the level of care that they want to be, whether it's inpatient, med surg, they want to be critical care, icu, emergency medicine, or outside of our surgical and procedural spaces. So we're really proud of that.
- [09:31]
A
That is absolutely one of the most impressive things I think, about what you're doing. I wanted to follow up a little bit on something you mentioned earlier, which is just the advantage of with this money, this grant money and being able to expand your capabilities for training and how that plays out on the weekend and evening classes, opening this nurse training up into people that maybe want to do it, but just had full time jobs or for whatever reason couldn't take advantage of that. So how is that working out? I'd like both your thoughts on that.
- [10:01]
C
Yeah. Our evening cohort that we have right now seeing, most of them are full time employees, many of them at IU Health and they have families. And so getting back to school was just a challenge. And having an evening option really just opens it up. I know one of my early degrees after college, I had to do a nights and weekends kind of thing. And it's a challenge to work all day and then race over to class and, and study all evening. And your weekends get sucked up with more classes and studying. So what I like about it is it's a one year transition program. So it's, you know, can you do it for a year? Give us a year. Right. And they can talk to their families and they can plan for it and they can set it up. So I think it's been really transformational for those folks in that current cohort. And one day down the road, we do look to expand it. We're going to take the data from this first year and see how the second year goes. And at some point, about halfway through the second year cohort, we'll really be able to make a determination if we're able to grow. As you can imagine, whenever you start something new, it's always a little bit of a challenge. The known knowns and the unknown unknowns. But working through that. But for the students in the class, I think it's really been just an opportunity that they otherwise wouldn't have had. We actually have folks who have been driving in from outside our region because it's an opportunity here that they didn't get elsewhere.
- [11:28]
B
Yeah, I think when you really think about it, you know, everything is changing around us. And the way people work is also changing around us. The way people learn and go back to school is also changing. And kudos to Eric and his team for really seeing that change and attacking this head on with this new program that, that we can offer our members in the community the opportunity to go to school and work, take care of themselves, take care of their family in a way, with a schedule that works for what's ideal for them and their family. I think it gives the opportunity for us to improve or broaden that number of people who now have the opportunity to go back and learn because they're working during the day. Right. They're taking care of themselves, their families. And now this opportunity, this option just opens the door to a whole new set, hopefully of interested parties. So we're really excited about the benefit that we'll see both for Ivy Tech, the hospital at the end of their program, and really what the impact could mean to the community.
- [12:45]
A
I. I came across an article recently, just a few days ago, that put me in mind of our conversation right now. And I just wanted to bring it up and get your thoughts on this because I thought it was really interesting. It was in the Wall Street Journal. It was an article ran on April 1 and the title was Nursing is the sure Fire New Path to American Prosperity. That was the name of the article. I just wonder if that's something that, in your experience, have you seen that? Do you think that idea that healthcare, or nursing specifically is now a path to a better life is really starting to take. Take hold and, you know, become more widely believed among young people? And if so, what implications does that have for training programs like yours?
- [13:24]
B
Hospitals are very intricate and there are many aspects of when we think about health care or health and wellness that the nursing occupation plays a very big part. Many times we just think about within the four walls of the hospital, right? Emergency department, inpatient, operating rooms. But there are so many opportunities that there are paths within that nursing field. And the more and more that we could educate people about what can be, you know, and give a different perspective sometimes to what a nurse could be and what they do, the path then to that next step, third, fourth step out from just becoming a registered nurse, there's opportunities there as well. We have fully embraced nurse practitioners in our model of how we care as physician extenders. And they all were exposed to different specialties, different areas of care as nurses and said, hey, I want to go the next step. And after becoming an rn, there are so many paths to how you continue to grow, opportunities to expand. And of course we see salaries that come to match that as well. So I definitely think that it's a great starting ground that opens a wide array of opportunity within the healthcare field, not just the hospital, but with the healthcare field as a whole.
- [15:04]
C
Yeah, we're seeing that play out. On the training side, our nursing program and a few of our other healthcare programs are competitive programs, most at a community college. Vast majority of your programs are open access, open enrollment. But our healthcare programs are highly competitive. The salaries, the outcomes, the career opportunities. One thing I love is the chief nurse at IU Health Wilmington is an Ivy Tech grad and she went on and got her, you know, then she went on further and, and now is the chief nurse over at the hospital. I mean, it's fantastic. And we see it with respiratory therapy, we see it with radiation therapy. All of our other health care programs that we have, we're starting to really see growth and interest and the retention is there too. Students in those programs tend to stay in those programs. You know, they worked hard to get into them and so they're going to stay and they're going to get through them. They're not easy, they're tough programs and we hold our students to a high standard, but they meet it and it's great. For many, it's a first generation student. This is going to be transformational for their family. This is like generational change that's occurring here and so that is really huge and really impactful. We're really excited, especially with our various cohorts we have going on. Every term we have a cohort starting, so applications are always flowing. Feel free to Visit us at IvyTech Edu Nursing and you'll learn all about how to apply and what you need to do to get started.
- [16:34]
A
Well, it's so exciting what you're doing. And I can't congratulate you enough for not only making the difference in the lives of patients by providing trained caregivers that they need, but as you just mentioned, maybe, you know, opening up new paths and, you know, leading people to a better life and doing something, giving them an expanded opportunity to do something they love to do. So I'd like to thank you both for being on Advancing Health today and sharing your thoughts about the value of philanthropy and the value of expanded training and flexibility and how nurses are trained. But most of all, really what you're doing on behalf of the people of Southern Indiana, your patients, that's just so remarkable and so impressive. So thank you so much again. Really appreciate it.
- [17:14]
B
Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having us. And we're looking forward to working with Ivy Tech here to make this complete to fruition. This has been a long time coming, relationships that we're glad that we're here.
- [17:25]
C
Yeah, thank you, Tom. And I'd like to real quick, thanks to IU Health. Thanks to the Ferguson family, Connie and Steve, for making this a reality and really moving the needle for our students in the region. So thank you.
- [17:36]
A
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