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Reseda, CA - At a time when the country is experiencing a severe nursing shortage, the Los Angeles Jewish Home has become one of the first U.S. multi-level senior-living facilities to graduate a class of nurses from its own School of Nursing.

The students matriculated at the new Annenberg School of Nursing, which offers a full-time program that aims to prepare students to pass the state-required exam for licensure. The intensive program engages students 40 hours per week in the classroom or at clinical sites, plus three hours of reading per day. All students received 500 hours of classroom instruction and 980 hours of clinical training at local hospitals.

"We're incredibly proud of this inaugural graduating group," said Molly Forrest, CEO/president of the Home. "Virtually all healthcare providers throughout the country are faced with an extraordinary challenge of making sure superbly trained nurses are on hand for an increasingly aging population. This helps ensure we're ready to do so."

Forrest also believes the establishment of the school of nursing on site at the Home provides wonderful career-development opportunities for its own staff members and for members of the community in which it operates.

One attractive feature of the program is financial incentives for its students. The total cost to educate each student in the program is $19,000. Through generous gifts received from the Annenberg Foundation, UniHealth Foundation, and private donors, students receive a $10,000 tuition scholarship, which is forgiven if they take a nursing job at the Home upon graduation and stay for at least two years.

Also available is no-interest scholarship assistance through the L.A. Jewish Free Loan Program sponsored in part by Jewish Home donors Saul and Joyce Brandman.

Heading the school is Marie Fagan, former director of nursing at American Career College and Casa Loma College. "These students who graduated have come from all over the world and have brought a world of promise with them to help solve one of our great needs -- providing wonderful nursing skills."

The nation's nursing shortage is particularly acute in California. According to the California Economic Development Department, the state is expected to be short more than 100,000 registered nurses and 25,000 licensed vocational nurses by 2010.

SOURCE: Los Angeles Jewish Home