OU President Joseph Harroz announced the Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing will double the size of its enrollment class for its bachelor’s program in the upcoming fall semester to help combat the current healthcare worker shortage in Oklahoma.
Dean of the Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing Julie Hoff said roughly $14 million is being allocated from last year’s tax exemption, the Board of Regents and internal university costs to expand the class of nursing students accepted by the College of Nursing and build Oklahoma’s nursing workforce.
Harroz said Oklahoma ranked 46th in the nation in nurses per capita two years ago, and state leadership sought to “provide more nurses” or there would be “catastrophic consequences,” which the COVID-19 pandemic had amplified.
Harroz said the sole problem isn’t that there isn’t enough room or hospital beds for sick individuals, but the staffing shortage. Full hospital beds are no use, Harroz said, if there are not enough nurses to attend to all of those in need.
“The legislative leadership in this room — the governor, OU Health, all of those in this room — everyone here has been involved, stepped up and said, ‘Let’s be proactive and do something,’” Harroz said. “I made the largest investment, starting with a request from the state regents, going through our legislative leadership, going to the desk of the governor, and we put in place a record amount to help grow our nursing faculty and nursing students in the state and we did that.”
He said OU had immediately accepted 40 more students into the nursing program and 48 more partnership slots opened in Norman and Duncan. The college also accepted all 555 qualified applicants this year because of this new funding. To compensate for this influx of students, Hoff said they’re anticipating 21 new full-time employees.
“We have health systems around the state that are willing to partner with us,” Hoff said. “We’re using what we call a teacher practitioner model, where nurses shouldn’t have to decide if they want to teach or they want to practice. We do this in academic healthcare all the time where you might practice 80 percent and teach 20 percent, or vice versa.”
Harroz said the university is aware it won’t be able to sustain this growth over time without additional resources and is still calculating those numbers. They are working to make the numbers “efficient,” and will ask for more funds as possible, he said.
“We knew we needed to plug this gaping hole immediately, and then backfill it as we can with those resources,” Harroz said. “We want the number to be as small as possible, and we’re not there yet.”
Gov. Kevin Stitt said the state owes healthcare professionals a “debt of gratitude” and offered kudos to OU Health for their effort in supporting nurses and practitioners.
“I challenged our whole entire education system, K through 12, to work with industry and business (professionals and) to hear from (Secretary of Commerce and Workforce Development) Scott Mueller, the legislature and what the business community was saying,” Stitt said. “(They said) they need to fill those jobs of tomorrow, and you guys stepped up. Before, OU would not have room for about 40 percent of qualified applicants. This year, they’ve accepted 100 percent of all the qualified applicants, and that's just amazing.”
