Kaweah Health partners with Unitek Learning to enroll students to combat nursing shortage

Kaweah Health is partnering with Unitek Learning to enroll its first cohort of students to combat the nursing shortage at the hospital.

The partnership will select 25 applicants twice a year, but it is currently exclusive to Kaweah Health team members. Those selected will be nursing students under Unitek’s bachelor of science's three-year nursing program.

“As the program progresses, and it is a permanent program for nursing student candidates across the county, we’ll be able to expand this to the community as well,” said Keri Noeske, the chief nursing officer of Kaweah Health, in a virtual media briefing Friday morning.

The media briefing also included Avdel Yosef, provost of Unitek Learning, where both he and Noeske informed the public with updates while answering community member’s questions online.

Around 80 to 100 Kaweah Health team members are ready to enter the applicant pool, according to Noeske, and they’ll first undergo an interview process with the hospital. Those who are selected from the pool are then sent to Unitek to start in March.

Unitek’s goal is to expand education opportunities to underserved communities and to create health care providers that represent the community they serve, Yosef said.

“Imagine when the patients see themselves in the health care network. It raises the trust and encourages preventative care,” he said.

The nursing shortage worsened during the pandemic, Noeske added. Before COVID-19, around 60 to 80 nursing positions were vacant.

Now, there are 220 registered nursing positions, around 20% of the staff, that need to be filled at Kaweah Health, Noeske said.

“The pandemic has been absolutely crippling to our workforce, the majority of which are bedside nurses. It’s shown us that we have to do more, we have to think outside the box to grow the next generation of nurses,” said Lynn Havard Mirviss, a registered nurse and vice President of Kaweah Health’s board of directors. “There are many out there who like Florence Nightingale are ready to step up and serve. This partnership with Unitek is one way to help these men and women become nurses and raise the standards of care for patients.”

Unitek offers seven facilities in California with campuses in Fremont, San Jose, Hayward, Concord, South San Francisco, Sacramento and Bakersfield.

Currently, agency and travel nurses; “per diem,” by the day, nurses; and other staff members taking extra shifts is how the hospital has filled its vacant positions, according to her. However, Noeske noted how that is not a viable solution in the long-run.

“What happens though with the travel and agency nurses that come in, they’re not from the area or don’t spend a  long time at Kaweah… We lose some of that investment when they come for [six to 13] weeks. I will say, we have agency nurses that are here from six months to a year but we’re looking for the long-term,” she said.

She noted that the hospital does not operate with a short staff.

However, that hasn’t always been the case. The California Department of Public Health found Kaweah Health's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit had inadequate nursing levels almost half the month in March 2021. Kaweah was among hundreds of hospitals that were forced to run lean as nurses fought the virus and left for other jobs.

The partnership with Unitek aims to prevent these shortages. Once students are done with the program, they will have a three-year obligation to work at Kaweah Health facilities across Tulare County.

“I think the nursing shortage is a patient safety issue and a public health issue, so it is a crisis now. We need all to act together and work together to solve this workforce shortage, and this partnership is a great example,” Yosef said.

This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Kaweah Health looks to beat nursing shortage with new school