The New Hanover Healthcare Career Partnership has helped local institutions like Cape Fear Community College respond to a  “critical need” to train local nurses, said college president Jim Morton.

Since last year, the community college has awarded $255,000 in nursing scholarships, $510,000 in housing assistance and more than $26,000 in emergency assistance, Morton said Monday.

“These are not just numbers, they tell the story of real needs being met for our nursing students who will graduate and go straight into the hospitals, clinics and care facilities in our community and our region,” he added.

Financial support for nursing students is one part of the New Hanover Healthcare Career Partnership, formerly called the Health Care Talent Collaboration. The program, a partnership between the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), Cape Fear Community College (CFCC), New Hanover County Schools and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce Foundation, aims to recruit, train and retain health care workers in the Cape Fear region.

Local leaders offered an update on the initiative on Monday, roughly 18 months after the effort received a $22.3 million commitment in funding over three years from the New Hanover Community Endowment. 

New Hanover County Schools has worked to build out its exploratory classes and a Leadership Development Academy that can help students as young as fifth grade explore future healthcare careers. At the high school level, the school system has developed health science academies at its four traditional high schools, said Mandy Mills, New Hanover County Schools’ career and technical education director.

“These academies will provide a focused, supportive environment for students passionate about health care and committed to staying in our area after graduation. They'll have access to mentorship, work-based learning and direct connections to our partnering institutions, Cape Fear Community College and UNCW,” she said Monday. “Our goal is to create a clear, supportive path for students to learn about health care careers, develop valuable skills and ultimately strengthen our local health care workforce.”

The school system has also added zSpace programs, allowing students to navigate complex, 3-D health simulations on their laptops and draw on its partnerships with UNCW and CFCC.

At CFCC, Health Sciences Dean Mary Ellen Naylor said the college continues to grow its nursing program, including the addition of a new nurse aide lab at its North campus and the hiring of more faculty to keep up with enrollment growth. The college is also in the process of purchasing virtual reality software to help support additional simulation curriculum.

“We are finishing up some renovations of a building,” Naylor said, “and we will have an interdisciplinary simulation space that will allow for more interprofessional education amongst all of our programs within Health and Human Services and across the college as well as our partners.”

The college has also invested in wraparound services, including free drop-in childcare, scholarships, exam and emergency assistance and more to help support students as they navigate the nursing program, Naylor said.

Jack Watson, dean of UNCW’s College of Health & Human Services, said the university aims to produce more than 50% more nurses in the next three years.

“We're going to do that by increasing the number of students in each of our cohorts,” he said, “but we're also adding ABSN, an Accelerated Bachelor's of Science in Nursing program that we're very excited about.”

The first cohort in the ABSN program is set to start this summer, Watson said. They’re also looking to double the size of the university’s simulation center to address the challenge of finding quality clinical experiences for a growing number of students.

“That will be very important for the training of our nurses and making sure that we can help meet the demand for nurses and other vital healthcare professions in our community,” he said.

Both current CFCC nursing student Courtney Chaplin and Cassidy King, a UNCW nursing student who graduated in May, said participating in the Coastal Community Healthcare Fellowship has helped them succeed in the classroom and beyond.

Chaplin said she received financial assistance and mentorship through the program, which helped her focus on her goal of becoming a nurse.

“Without these programs and scholarships in place, I wouldn't have been able to continue on in this program,” she said. 

“My dream is to be part of a movement that bridges Western medicine and holistic care as a nurse practitioner. Because I believe healing is more than physical, it's emotional and it's spiritual, and it starts with compassion, and that's what I'm bringing into every room that I walk into as a nurse.” Chaplin added.

King said support from the fellowship allowed her to consider working in health care in Wilmington after graduation, despite the area’s high cost of living.

“The support I received through scholarships, a mentorship stipend and licensure funding gave me the stability to focus on growing as a nurse instead of worrying about making ends meet,” King said.

Steven Hill, vice president of talent pipeline with the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, said the partnership has seen significant buy-in from local health care employers, whom he meets with regularly.

“There's momentum, there's effort, and now there's trust,” he said. “So that's a big deal for us.”

Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Natalie English said one year of endowment funding remains for the program, but she said it would continue.

“We want to make sure (the endowment) understands what we're doing and what other investments we've gotten … in the event that we do need to come back to them,” she said. “We're talking about that as a collaborative, and we're talking to board members and staff at the endowment. This will be sustained, somehow, this collaborative will be sustained.”