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Nursing interest strong, facility space weak at TTC
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Like the rest of the nation, South Carolina faces a critical nursing shortage. By 2015, the Palmetto State will suffer a dearth of some 15,000 nurses.
Trident Technical College is giving its all to meet the nursing demand. And student interest in the college’s nursing program is strong.
“We have students waiting to get in,” said Mary Thornley, the college’s president.
The problem is that the two-year college lacks the space to accommodate more nursing students and more nursing educators, Thornley said.
“We need brick and mortar space so we can include hundreds of more nursing students,” she added.
What Thornley seeks is a new $26 million building to house the college’s nursing program, currently housed in the Health Sciences Building, which includes other health care programs aside from nursing.
Last year the state Legislature rejected Trident Technical College’s funding request for the building. The college will ask for the money again this year, Thornley said.
A building devoted entirely to the college’s nursing program would allow that program to expand, in terms of lab and classroom space, plus student and faculty accommodation, by at
least 40%, Thornley said.
Trident Technical College has 28 faculty members in its nursing program while the number of students in the program ranges between 425 and 450. The college admits 276 new students a year, said Muriel Horton, dean of Trident Technical College’s nursing programs.
In June, 108 students enrolled in pre-nursing courses were waiting to get into the college’s nursing program, Horton said.
The nursing program has classroom space scattered in different buildings across the Trident Tech campus.
Adequate space to train future nurses is only part of the nursing-shortage crisis. Lack of qualified faculty is also part of the problem. The reason is salaries. Nursing educators often leave the classroom for work in the hospital, where there they can earn about $20,000 more
a year, Horton said.
Horton would like to see the state Legislature increase the salaries of nurse educators so colleges can retain them.
In 2005, 34,000 qualified nursing applicants in the United States were turned down because nursing schools lacked slots for them, Gail Stuart, dean of the Medical University of South Carolina’s School of Nursing, told the Business Journal last year.
To combat the nursing shortage in South Carolina, the state must spend more on nursing education, Stuart added.
Trident Tech’s Thornley and Horton agree.
With baby boomers approaching their golden years, people living longer and requiring more care and the bulk of nurses facing retirement, it is imperative Trident Technical College and other institutions have what they need to produce more nurses, Horton said.
“We can’t produce enough nurses because we don’t have enough facilities to train them,” Thornley said.
“We have to be concerned about it because we’re going to become the patients,” said Horton.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer at the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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