Building bridges to change the face of nursing

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A College Nursing Department was awarded a large, three-year Nursing Workforce Diversity grant by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in fall 2004. This presentation describes the issues, challenges and rewards of writing, submitting, receiving, and implementing a grant. This session will provide a concrete, “nuts and bolts,” how-to approach to 1) getting started, 2) moving the grant from the written word to action, and 3) lessons learned along the way. The backdrop of this presentation will be a discussion of the Pipeline to Nursing (PtN) activities and first year outcomes. The main purpose of the PtN project is to increase recruitment and retention of disadvantaged groups, specifically Hispanic pre-nursing and nursing students. A series of targeted activities include 1) recruiting future nurses from minority–majority junior and senior high schools; 2) increasing student success in basic skills such as reading, English, and math; 3) supporting student retention through learning communities, structured mentoring and tutoring; and 4) preparing a culturally competent and sensitive healthcare workforce.