A partnership between Marymount University in Arlington and Virginia Hospital Center aims to help train and recruit nurses while incentivizing them to remain in Northern Virginia.
The partnership, which is being supported by a donation pledge of $318,000 in scholarship funding to the VHC Health Foundation, will help the university’s more than 400 nursing students continue to get hands-on experience outside of the classroom.
Andrew Wolf, director and chief nursing officer at Marymount’s Malek School of Nursing, said the partnership will have an impact on all students “as they travel through the program and have the opportunity to engage in clinical experiences within VHC.”
“(VHC understands) what the needs of the local workforce are, and they really value having our graduates join their workforce,” Wolf said.
Each semester, Wolf said, nursing students rotate through a clinical rotation in either a hospital or community setting, getting hands-on experience while supervised by a Marymount faculty member.
The partnership means the hospital and university will be “more intentional about planning those experiences together, and we’re increasing the involvement of VHC nurses very intentionally in that educational process.”
It’s also creating a joint research pathway, he said, which will train nurses in translational research, “which is really focused on using the basic science that we’re gaining through nursing research, but then figuring out how to apply it a real-world practice.”
Many of the university’s nursing students are first-generation college students, Wolf said, and “many of our students have significant financial need.”
Part of the agreement calls for both groups to seek donations from the community, with the goal of offering tuition support in exchange for a commitment to remain a nurse at VHC after graduation.
“Together in this partnership, we obviously want to contribute to growing and preparing the next generation of nurses, but it’s also critically important that we do what we can to ensure that many of these nurses stay within the Arlington community and support the health care needs of our local community,” Wolf said.
Ensuring students get hands-on clinical opportunities should help the university “get ahead of the game and ensure that we’re providing the nurses to replace those who will be retiring over the next five to 10 years,” Wolf said.
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