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"It isn't a huge amount," Geolot said, "but
it makes a difference. That's 675 nurses who are providing
service in facilities that have critical shortages of
nurses."
She expects the program to eventually expand beyond
its requested $15 million budget and make more awards
in the future. "There's a lot of interest in the
program," she said.
Some states, including Oregon, Texas and Florida, offer
similar, smaller-scale loan repayment programs, often
aimed at bringing nurses to specific areas. In Oregon's
Nursing Services Loan Repayment Program, nurses either
must be working in or agree to work in specific rural
counties.
Although rural counties are no longer the only places
with nursing shortages, Oregon's Legislature specified
"rural and frontier areas" when it established
the program in 2001, said Joan Bouchard, MSN, executive
director for the Oregon State Board of Nursing. The
program received 60 applications in 2001, and awarded
eight nurses loan repayments of between $3,500 and $35,776.
In Pennsylvania, a student loan repayment service is
partnering with private hospitals to offer loan repayment
to nursing students. Participating Pennsylvania employers
agree to match contributions from the nonprofit Pennsylvania
Higher Education Assistance Agency to repay up to 25
percent or $12,500 of eligible loans during three years
of employment. Hospitals can increase their contributions
if they wish. The foundation expects to make nearly
13,000 awards in its first three years.
"There's definitely an interest," said Joe
Manotti, nursing loan forgiveness coordinator for the
agency. "We've had a lot of applications."
The agency is paying for its contributions with proceeds
from a series of refinanced bond issues.
The Health Professions Education Foundation in California
pays for its nursing loan repayment and scholarship
programs in part through a $5 surcharge on nursing license
renewals. The education reimbursement programs, which
began in 1990, offer nurses working in California up
to $8,000 for tuition and supplies in exchange for two
years of direct patient care in medically underserved
areas, including all county hospitals. Nurses can reapply
after two years to receive a maximum of $19,000.
The program has awarded 640 RN-to-BSN scholarships
and 326 loan repayment grants since its inception, said
Charles Gray, program director for the foundation.
Private hospitals may offer payments of anywhere from
a few hundred dollars to $10,000 or more toward paying
off student loans. Some hospitals offer to pay students'
nursing school tuition before they graduate. Some offer
loan repayment to new graduates as a kind of sign-on
bonus. Others offer it to any employee who has student
loans. All programs have some sort of work payback requirement,
usually a year of work for every year of schooling.
The loan repayment and scholarship programs have become
increasingly popular among private hospitals in the
last three years, nurse recruiters said.
"You have to have it just to stay up with the
Joneses," said Ken Joyce, a nurse recruiter for
human resources at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in
St. Louis. "It's become one of those fixed perks
that graduate nurses will come out and ask about. If
you don't have it and another hospital does, you run
the risk of losing that candidate."
The variety of possibilities to pay for a nursing education
could turn students and new grads into bug-eyed kids
in a candy store, as they try to plan careers and financial
futures. But student advisers say many nursing students
seem to understand how to look at loan repayment and
scholarship programs as part of a larger picture.
"They know they're somewhat in the driver's seat,
that all the hospitals want them," said Brenda
Hackett, MSN, RN, academic counselor and faculty member
at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, Ind.,
near the Kentucky border.
Hackett said the scholarship loan programs offered
by private hospitals have not been as popular as she
would have expected among students. "When they
first came along, I thought the students would really
be after these programs," she said.
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