Copyright© 2007 by School Services of California, Inc.

                                      Volume 20                   For Publication Date: August 17, 2007             No. 18

Computer Software Can Reduce Nursing Shortage for State 

An online computer system to help alleviate the growing shortage of nurses has been developed by the Berkeley-based Bay Area Nursing Resource Center, a consortium of educational organizations in Northern California. 

According to K.T. Waxman, program director for the nursing resource center, “the schools in the San Francisco Bay Area indicated to us that in order to expand their nursing program, they needed to find more clinical placements.” The program matches nursing school students to clinical placements in hospitals and clinics in the nine-county service area. The web-based computer software system helps some 35 nursing education programs in the region by matching their needs with close to 1,500 available clinical training openings at 65 participating hospitals and clinical sites.   

This program is becoming a great resource for schools. Waxman is also the program director for the California Institute for Nursing and Health Care in Berkeley. This organization has joined with the Foundation for California Community Colleges in Sacramento that co-manages the nursing resource center.   

The goal of the program is to identify untapped capacity for nursing students. The online matching service enables participating schools to enter in the clinical training experiences their students need while the hospitals and other sites input their clinical placement opportunities. The hospitals have the final say as to whether they will accept or decline the proposals made by the schools.    

The software is also being used in Florida and Texas. According to a company release, “the system has been battled-tested in the Bay Area for three years. A similar coalition consisting of two groups in Florida launched the system about a year ago. A Texas coalition covering 13 counties just signed up.” 

Other community colleges outside of the Bay Area consortium can participate, since the server hosting the service is housed in Sacramento and maintained by the Foundation for California Community Colleges. The Foundation was awarded an $8.27 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to launch five regional nursing simulation centers to be shared by nursing schools and hospitals in the region.   

For additional information or for schools that are interested in participating please contact Nikki West at the Centralized Clinical Placement System at (510) 295-9599, or visit the Bay Area Nursing Resource Center website at:  http://www.bayareanrc.org/. 

—Jamillah Moore, Ed.D.