Voice-over:
Florida's nursing shortage is currently estimated at Thirty-four thousand and is expected to nearly double by the year 2020. To address this critical situation, substantial donations from blue cross blue shield of Florida, together with matching state funds, will be given to the Universities of Florida and North Florida.
Voice-over:
The University of Florida College of Nursing will receive $600,000 dollars from blue cross blue shield and an additional $420,000 dollars from the state legislature. This funding will help expand future nursing education by training additional educators. Ultimately that will help generate more nurses to meet the current shortage and keep up with the growing demand for them throughout the state.
Mirroring a national trend, thousands of nursing positions are vacant, which has been shown to decrease patient care and increase health-care costs.
Dr. Kathleen Long / Dean of the College of Nursing at UF:
"We're very excited about this gift and it really represents the culmination of two years of work with Blue Cross Blue Shield. This gift is going to allow us to prepare more faculty members and each of those faculty members will prepare hundreds of new nurses to help us address the nursing shortage throughout the state of Florida."
Voice-over:
The University of Florida plans to expand and enhance the North Florida Ph.D. consortium, which links U-F’s doctoral nursing program to students at several other Florida universities through a cooperative degree approach. It provides access to doctoral-level nursing education through innovative distance education programs.
Dr. Bernie Machen / University of Florida President:
"The gift from Blue Cross and Blue Shield to the University of Florida will enable us to deal with the critical shortage of nursing teachers and will enable us to address this need by expanding and enhancing the University of Florida's Ph.D. consortium, which serves in helping provide nursing faculty for all of North Florida."
Voice-over:
An additional one-point-two-million-dollar grant from the state of Florida has been given to U-F and U-N-F to help further grow this critical work force in the health-care system. From the university of Florida Health Science Center, I'm Eva Egensteiner.
