New Jersey's nursing shortage has led to understaffing in hospitals even contributing to an ongoing nurse's strike it's nothing new nurse numbers have been on the decline for years made worse by covid while one school is tackling the issue head on creating the William Patterson University School of Nursing Joshua Powers Provost and Senior vice president of academic Affairs joined me to talk about it Josh so great to have you on the show now you were really the driving force behind the creation of the William Patterson School of Nursing we know there's a teaching excuse me there's a nursing shortage in New Jersey in the nation how much did that shortage factor into the creation of this program well thank you very much for having me let's talk about this important topic that nursing shortage was one of our primary reasons for for doing this right now the estimates are they're around 13 000 unfilled nursing positions around the state and we see tremendous opportunity and need to address that particular challenge we now have probably one of the largest nursing programs in the state both at the undergraduate and graduate level and we're just very excited about where the School of Nursing can take us to really leverage what we've built for even greater contribution to the state and the needs of the state let's talk about the program just a little bit tell us what the students who come through your doors are going to walk away with whether it's a graduate or undergraduate degree sure well there's a couple things important to keep in mind first of all one of the ways we built our tremendous expansion has been on through our WP online so we launched a series of programs actually right at the start of the pandemic and those have grown extraordinarily because they meet the needs of working professionals so that particular component which is also an affordable way to pursue a nursing education has just been extraordinarily game changer for us and the School of Nursing and the Partnerships we've developed around it are going to be able to allow us to leverage that some more particularly in perhaps some of the Allied Health Professions yeah it's interesting because you could have made this just a nursing major a Nursing degree but instead you dedicated a school to it and you leaned on insight and expertise from some of New Jersey's Hospital Systems just talk about that process and and what you gain from those conversations to better prepare these young professionals sure well as uh anybody in the nursing area recognizes the Partnerships with Area Health Providers is critical in part because of the need for clinical sites where students can go have an opportunity to learn with within in the hospital and all the things that go along with that so we have very strong relationships for example right here in Wayne with St Joseph's uh hospital system it's been an incredible incredible partner with us Atlantic Health Systems but another partner with us they have a huge need for nurses and we have a need to engage them for the around some teaching opportunities in our curriculum to be able to allow that to expand and the School of Nursing and the framework of that with our new leader will allow us to do that and just very quickly do you anticipate that this program is going to help solve or at least majorly reduce the nursing shortage that we see uh I'm not on the illusion it will solve the nursing shortage but William Patterson is I think we found the key things that make that possible yeah our biggest need is faculty there's a faculty problem we don't have enough faculty to deliver our programs um but if we partner with the with the health systems and allow nurses to be on our faculty which something we've worked very actively to do at our school of nursing will help us do even more that's a key way to get the capacity to be able to do some of that that's all the time we have but Josh powers from William Patterson University thank you so much you're totally welcome we appreciate it [Music]