By Caitlin Howard
THE KEENE SENTINEL
With the help of $250,000 in federal funds, Keene State College and River Valley Community College are partnering to better address the statewide nursing shortage.
The funds will be used to establish a formal collaboration with regional health care employers to create a pipeline between the colleges and the workforce, designed to better match recently graduated nursing students to jobs, according to a news release Thursday from Keene State.
“Working with River Valley, we can deliver a broader spectrum of nursing credentials,” Keene State President Melinda Treadwell said in the news release. “We want the first talent our employers see to be our trained students.”
This effort, which is in its initial stages, includes the creation of a new position to support internship and clinical placements for students, as well as a needs assessment to determine other areas for improvement. The college will conduct an open search for the position, said Paul Miller, director of communications for Keene State.
The needs assessment, being conducted by members of the KSC faculty, is the first step in providing more substantial means of addressing the issue, according to Miller.
“This work needs to be the next generation of a long, purposeful effort to continue to unlock the clinical bottlenecks and make healthcare where we live everything it should and needs to be,” Treadwell said in the news release.
This is not the first time the two colleges have come together to expand nursing program offerings in the region.
In 2019, River Valley entered a co-location agreement with Keene State, providing RVCC administrative space on campus and access to other campus facilities, like classrooms and the Mason Library. The Claremont-based community college also has a location in Lebanon.
Last year, in part due to the colleges’ shared space, River Valley brought its licensed practical nurse program to Keene, which contributed to the expansion of RVCC’s registered nurse program, RVCC President Alfred Williams said in the news release.
Keene State has 122 students enrolled in its nursing program, according to Williams.
RVCC’s LPN program is offered in Keene, Lebanon, Laconia, and Littleton. Additional support from the state would allow them to expand into Manchester and Nashua in the coming year, Miller said.
As Keene State only offers a Bachelor of Science in nursing, the colleges hope to expand the program at all credential levels. River Valley offers licensed nursing assistant, LPN, LPN-to-RN, and RN programs.
The funding is part of federal assistance that Cheshire County received through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), resources devoted to alleviating effects of COVID-19, including “replacing lost revenue, supporting essential workers, investing in targeted infrastructure,” the news release notes.
Cheshire County received over $7 million from the ARPA last summer and a similar amount came through this June, for a total of $14.7 million. The $250,000 the college received is a portion of that overall amount.
In addition to the funds directed to the college, other local businesses and projects received a portion of the county’s ARPA funding — including The Colonial Theatre in downtown Keene, the Southwest Region Planning Commission and the Greater Keene & Peterborough Chamber of Commerce.
Nursing shortages have been challenging health care institutions nationwide. The shortage, however, is not new — before the pandemic, some hospitals relied on mandatory overtime and a limited staff to fill shifts, instead of hiring new nurses, according to The New York Times. The situation was only worsened by the pandemic.
Now, the demand for nurses is on the rise. In Massachusetts, for example, the percentage of unfilled nursing positions in acute-care hospitals doubled since 2019, rising from six percent to nearly 14 percent, according to a recent report from the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association.
Cheshire County is no different. Maplewood Nursing Home in Westmoreland, for example, has limited admittance, according to the news release — not due to a lack of room availability, but because of staffing shortages.
“The future of long-term care depends on the development of health care professionals in our community,” Maplewood Administrator Kathryn Kindopp said in the news release.
Caitlin Howard can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1441, or [email protected].
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