Commonwealth Health, Jersey College partner for nursing school at Moses Taylor
Oct. 11—Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton will soon house a nursing school, the product of a partnership between Commonwealth Health and Jersey College.
Inaugural classes at the Jersey College — School of Nursing Scranton campus will begin in January. It will offer both an RN program, preparing students to become registered nurses, and an LPN to RN bridge program for licensed practical nurses working to further their careers, according to the college's website.
The first class will include up to 30 students, who'll earn associate degrees in nursing upon completing all program requirements. A Commonwealth press release notes the hospital-based campus will allow students to learn nursing in a clinical setting and experience a seamless transition from theory to application.
"The need for nurses in this market and across the country has been high for some time and is expected to continue," Todd Burda, chief nursing officer of Moses Taylor Hospital and Regional Hospital of Scranton, said in the press release.
Jersey College's website includes information on a Commonwealth Health-sponsored tuition assistance program for nursing students who commit to work for a time at Moses Taylor, Regional Hospital of Scranton or Wilkes-Barre General Hospital upon graduation. All three are Commonwealth facilities.
Students who work for one or more of the hospitals throughout their enrollment are eligible for tuition reimbursement from Commonwealth. Graduates who work for one or more of the facilities will be eligible for loan forgiveness. There are also scholarship opportunities.
"We like to find a community that has a specific need," said Maggie Jeffers, Jersey College division director of hospital based campuses. "We want to find and educate the nurses that are going to stay within their community for the most part, and be able then to continue their career where they started their education. That's our goal."
Strategies to attract and retain health care workers locally are important to meeting workforce demand and ensuring residents have access to high quality care, said Teri Ooms, president and CEO of the Northeast Pennsylvania-based Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development. A lot of nurses and health care professions have and will continue to retire over the next two decades, creating vacancies that will need to be filled, she said.
"Our local higher education institutions do a phenomenal job of training nurses, but many of their students are not local and they go back to where they came from," Ooms said. "So an opportunity to bring people here to train that keeps them here is certainly something we need to look at, because our health care staffing needs are just going to continue to be a definitive demand."
The nursing school at Moses Taylor will consist of a 13,000-square-foot campus, 1,500-square-foot simulation lab, seven classrooms, student study rooms and lounge space, according to Jersey College's website. It notes the professional nursing program is approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Nursing and the Scranton campus is authorized as an education enterprise by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Jersey College Chancellor Greg Karzhevsky said in the press release that the college and Commonwealth Health have worked for months to "develop a unique nursing education experience."
"From our initial meetings, the Commonwealth Health leadership teams have shared our vision for this collaborative model of educating future nurses to care for patients in Northeastern Pennsylvania," he said.
Jersey College has other nursing school campuses in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, New Jersey and Tennessee. For more information on the Moses Taylor campus, including the enrollment process, visit jerseycollege.edu/scranton.
Contact the writer: jhorvath@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9141; @jhorvathTT on Twitter.
