Health Carousel, the 17th-largest healthcare staffing agency in the U.S., has just made a $200,000 three-year commitment to support nursing education and training programs in the United States and overseas. This multi-year investment represents only a small part of the enormous work being done through Health Carousel’s Light the Way initiative.
Health Carousel’s Light the Way initiative is named after the famous and beloved Florence Nightingale, who is considered to be the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale was commonly referred to as “The Lady With the Lamp” because she spent her nights tending to wounded soldiers using only a small oil lamp.
Health Carousel’s Light The Way program has been in existence since 2004. It focuses on ethical recruiting and the long-term sustainability of the nursing profession. Light the Way is proud to announce additional efforts abroad and in the USA on International Nurses Day 2022.
Nursing Support in the USA and Abroad
Light the Way funds in the U.S. have been pegged to create and fund nursing scholarships for nurses who seek to obtain a post-graduate or graduate nursing degree. The responsibility for the administration of these scholarships has yet to be decided but will fall to one of several US-based professional nursing organizations. The preferred partner in the delivery of nursing education for Health Carousel has been named Chamberlain University.
Around the world, Light the Way funds will be used for a variety of nursing sustainability initiatives. In the Philippines, funds will be utilized for Ph.D. nurse educators scholarships, which is intended to improve the student quality and capacity of nursing schools as well as the education they offer. In Uganda, these funds are being used to create a nurse training laboratory with help from the Uganda Nurse and Midwives Union. Other programs elsewhere in the world are in development and will be announced as they take shape.
Benefits For Nurse Education and Educators
The choice of Health Carousel to fund nursing education and support nurse educators is entirely on purpose. Earl Dalton is Chief Nursing Officer at Health Carousel.”Health Carousel’s investments battle against dangerous emerging industry trends which threaten patient care. Experienced nurses are exiting the U.S., at the same time that our aging population requires more complex health care. The result is a widening experience-complexity gap. We believe that Health Carousel’s investment is an effective solution to help solve this problem.”
In the U.S., over 80,000 qualified nursing applicants were turned down by nursing schools in 2019 because of a shortage of nursing educators, according to The American Association of Colleges of Nursing. The Philippines also has an alarming number of nurses who lack proper education and training. Similar situations are manifesting in other countries around the world.
Founder and Board Chair of Health Carousel Bill DeVille remarked that Health Carousel has a long tradition of investing in the future of nursing. This is just one more way that Health Carousel is striving to make a difference.
