|
|
| |
More
NurseWeek Features |
|
|
Smoke-Free Zone |
|
| |
Nurses and patients tackle nicotine addiction
|
|
 |
Bloodless Survival |
|
| |
Surgical techniques to use when transfusion drops out of the equation |
|
|
|
| As
the nursing shortage continues, nursing loan forgiveness
programs are increasing as hospitals and clinics
scramble to hire nurses. In Pennsylvania, a student
loan repayment service is partnering with private
hospitals to offer loan repayment to nursing students. |
Growing up on an American Indian reservation in North
Dakota, Alyssa DeCoteau, RN, witnessed firsthand the
work of the nurses with the Indian Health Service. She
knew how valuable those nurses were to her community.
She knew how desperately her family and others on the
reservation needed them.
DeCoteau didn't just want to be a nurse, she wanted
to be a nurse on a reservation. She wanted to make enough
money to be comfortable and to buy her children books
at book fairs-something her parents could never afford-but
she didn't see nursing school as the ticket to a high-paying
job. Her family couldn't afford to send her to school,
so when she learned about a program that would pay for
her schooling in exchange for two years of work for
the Indian Health Service, she jumped at the chance.
"I planned to go home to a reservation to work,"
said DeCoteau, who has since returned to the Recruitment/Retention
of American Indians Into Nursing (RAIN) program at the
University of North Dakota in Grand Forks to become
a nurse practitioner. "So it wasn't hard for me
to do the payback part of it."
For some time, the government and nonprofit foundations
have offered payback scholarships and loan forgiveness
programs-also called loan repayment programs-to lure
all varieties of health care workers, including nurses,
to remote rural hospitals and poor, inner-city clinics.
But as the nursing shortage continues, nursing loan
forgiveness programs are expanding or increasing as
hospitals and clinics scramble to hire nurses. Many
private hospitals now offer to pay off student loans
as part of packages designed to attract new graduates.
Some states have established new loan forgiveness programs
for nurses who work in certain high-need areas. Pointing
to a drastic national need for nurses, the federal government
this year expanded its loan repayment program to practically
any hospital in the country experiencing a nursing shortage.
Nurse recruiters at private hospitals say these programs
seem to help attract some new graduates, but because
most programs have just started, they still can't judge
how effective they are at keeping new employees. Student
advisers say they tell students to look closely at the
programs and the institutions offering them before they
commit themselves to two or four years of work. Those
who run the government and nonprofit foundation programs,
as well as the nurses who have participated in them,
say the nurses who have the greatest success are those
like DeCoteau, who choose a program because it fits
in with their own career goals and not the other way
around.
In a typical loan forgiveness program, a nurse or a
nursing student signs an agreement to work at a particular
hospital or clinic, or in a particular area, in exchange
for full or partial repayment of student loans or nursing
school tuition. The amount varies greatly from program
to program. The largest of these is the Nurse Education
Loan Repayment Program, administered by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services
Administration. This program offers to repay up to 60
percent of student loans in exchange for two years of
service in "critical shortage facilities."
The HRSA program, which is accepting applications until
March 31, has a long list of such facilities, including
hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and public
health departments. But the program's requested budget
will allow it to make only 675 awards nationally. Applicants
who show the greatest disparity between the amount of
their student loans and their salaries and who work
in hospitals serving a "disproportionate share"
of low-income patients will receive first consideration
for the awards, said Denise Geolot, Ph.D., RN, FAAN,
director of HRSA's Bureau of Health Professions' Division
of Nursing
Next Page
|
Reply
to Article
