West Virginia Center for Nursing
Adopted December 16, 2005
The West Virginia Center for Nursing seeks to enhance and strengthen nursing excellence to optimize the health and healthcare of all West Virginians, through strategic workforce planning, education, research, and nurse practice development.
Objectives
- Statewide Master Plan
- Long-term solutions
- Increased educational capacity
- Skilled nurse leadership
- Nursing practice research
- Informed public policy
- Support vulnerable populations
- Coalition-building
- Home for statewide nursing projects
Goals
- Establish a statewide strategic plan to address the nursing shortage in West Virginia;
- Establish and maintain a database of statistical information regarding nursing supply, demand and turnover rates in West Virginia as well as future projections;
- Coordinate communication between the organizations that represent nurses, health care providers, businesses, consumers, legislators and educators;
- Enhance and promote recruitment and retention of nurses by creating reward, recognition and renewal programs;
- Promote media and positive image building efforts for nursing, including establishing a statewide media campaign to recruit students of all ages and backgrounds to the various nursing programs throughout West Virginia;
- Promote nursing careers through educational and scholarship programs, programs directed at nontraditional students and other workforce initiatives;
- Explore solutions to improve working environments for nurses to foster recruitment and retention;
- Explore and establish loan repayment and scholarship programs designed to benefit nurses who remain in West Virginia after graduation and work in hospitals and other health care institutions;
- Establish grants and other programs to provide financial incentives for employers to encourage and assist with nursing education, internships and residency programs;
- Develop incentive and training programs for long-term care facilities and other health care institutions to use self-assessment tools documented to correlate with nurse retention, such as the magnet hospital program;
- Explore and evaluate the use of year-round day, evening and weekend nursing training and education programs;
- Establish a statewide hotline and website for information about the center and its mission, nursing careers and educational opportunities in West Virginia;
- Evaluate capacity for expansion of nursing programs, including the availability of faculty, clinical laboratories, computers and software, library holdings and supplies;
- Oversee development and implementation of education and matriculation programs for healthcare providers covering certified nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, registered professional nurses, advanced nurse practitioners and other advanced degrees;
- Seek to improve the compensation of all nurses, including nursing educators; and
- Perform such other activities as needed to alleviate the nursing shortage in West Virginia.