University of Hawaii nursing programs receive $1.75 million boost

Gov. David Ige said Thursday he is allocating $1.75 million to hire instructors for the University of Hawaii’s nursing schools in an attempt to fill 1,000 nursing vacancies in the state.

In 2021 just 442 nursing students graduated in Hawaii, and 65% of qualified applicants to UH nursing school programs were turned away “because we did not have education capacity,” Hawaii State Center for Nursing Director Laura Reichhardt said at a news conference at UH Manoa.

The funds will pay for 39 clinical instructors already hired at various UH campuses for the ongoing fall semester and are expected to run out by the end of the fiscal year, according to UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl and UH Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and nursing professor Lorrie Wong.

“Before the pandemic, Hawaii graduated about the right number of nurses to meet the state’s nursing workforce needs,” Reichhardt said. But the COVID-19 pandemic caused a spike in demand for nurses, she said.

The nursing faculty is now stretched too thin with its course load. The extra 39 clinical instructors teach students in clinics and hospitals, lightening full-time faculty members’ burden. The funds will pay instructors more than $2,000 per credit, according to Clementina Ceria-Ulep, interim dean at UH Manoa’s Nancy Atmospera-Walch School of Nursing.

UH Hilo is receiving the most money, $532,150, to hire 12 instructors, and UH Manoa is receiving $354,767 to hire eight. UH Community Colleges collectively will receive $842,572 for 19 positions: nine at Kapiolani, three at UH Maui, three at Kauai and four at Hawaii. The amount of money per instructor is roughly $44,346.

In order to retain the new nursing instructors, $27,000 will support their professional development to gain new competencies in nursing education.

William Siegman, a nurse for 40 years and the undergraduate program director at the UH Manoa nursing school, said the money will help the program have enough dedicated go-to instructors they can depend on to teach students in clinical settings.

“It’s hard to find” instructors, Siegman said, so the funds will help him “not to have to search for people, not to have to worry if the site will take one more student for a clinical section.”

The shortage of instructors is “pretty standard around the country,” said Carolyn Yucha, interim dean of the School of Nursing at Hawaii Pacific University. “We are always asking for more faculty,” she said.

Since HPU is not a state school, it did not receive any funds, despite facing the same problem. “We had twice as many qualified applicants as we could take,” Yucha said.

Since a bachelor’s degree in nursing takes four years, UH nursing schools will need to continue to find funds to hire instructors.

“The expectation is that either UH or the next governor will either permanently provide the funding to our budget or at least another supplemental amount, like this past budget item. Or maybe it’d be for two years, something to get us to weather the storm,” Meisenzahl said.

Even before the funding looked like it would clear the Legislature, Meisenzahl said, UH started recruiting nursing instructors. “We were going to find the money somewhere,” he said.

Ceria-Ulep explained that “most” of the schools already had hired instructors for fall 2022 and spring 2023. “They were going to pay out of their own budget,” Ceria- Ulep said. “By providing this extra funding, that actually frees them up to hire the lecturers with this funding.”

“A large number” of nursing students stay in Hawaii after graduation, Reichhardt said. “But we’re unable to give you an exact percentage,” she added. The in­centives in place to keep graduates in the state are the connections students make through clinical education, earlier recruitment offers for jobs, and benefits packages that “are being applied today,” she said.

FUNDING BREAKDOWN

>> UH Manoa: $354,767 funding 8 positions

>> UH Hilo: $532,150 funding 12 positions

>> UH Community Colleges (Kapiolani CC, UH Maui, Kauai CC, Hawaii CC): $842,572 funding 19 positions

>> Kapiolani Community College: 9 positions

>> UH Maui College: 3 positions

>> Kauai Community College: 3 positions

>> Hawaii Community College: 4 positions

>> Professional development training: $27,000

Source: UH news release