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Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer and Stanly Community College in Albemarle are collaborating to meet the growing demand for registered nurses in U.S. hospitals.
The schools created a Department of Nursing in the School of Natural and Health Sciences at Pfeiffer. It will offer an undergraduate program for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Pfeiffer's new program is expected to produce about 20 nurses annually. Students can apply for the fall 2009 academic year. The four-year program will consist of teaching and clinical experience.
The program comes at a time when the country is in the midst of a nursing shortage that is expected to grow in the next decade. There are 118,000 vacancies of registered nurses in hospitals across the U.S. The shortage is expected to reach nearly 800,000 by 2020. In North Carolina, the shortage is expected to be 18,000 by 2020, according to a forecast from the N.C. Nursing Workforce Report Task Force.
