Southern Vermont College

I recently attended an event where I was surprised to hear the featured speaker refer to the field of nursing as a ‘pink ghetto’. The term was coined 30 years ago as a way to describe low paying jobs for women that limited their advancement and the quantum of professional respect they received. As applied to nursing today, this is a flawed term – an anachronism in the healthcare workplace.

At Southern Vermont College, we have both female and male nursing students training to become the healthcare leaders of tomorrow, and their prospective workplaces will be neither “pink” nor a “ghetto.” Indeed, these graduates comprise a critical part of our workforce.

Wisely, more and more males are entering the nursing profession. At SVC, more than 15% of our nursing students are male, more than the national average and that number continues to grow. With returning vets (whose progression to college will be government assisted with the GI bill) this number should increase.

Second, nursing is a profession of almost unparalleled opportunity, thus the opposite of a ghetto. Nurses, particularly those with bachelor degrees, are both high in demand and well compensated. Today’s nurses provide a range of key services from primary care in hospitals and other medical facilities to management of operating suites to case management to primary healthcare research.

At SVC, we remain deeply committed to our nursing program. Instead of cutting back, we have found ways to expand. In 2009, our College grew nursing program enrollment by twenty percent (20%). We added a state-of-the-art simulation laboratory and an enhanced science classroom to ensure that our students have access to the most effective learning resources available.

What is needed is financial support for institutions that provide healthcare education. I urge local, state and federal governments, private foundations and local and regional hospitals to consider ways of infusing immediate fiscal support to collegiate nursing programs for faculty and facilities. This support will provide students, including many first generation students, a pathway to a healthcare career, a career that we, as a society, sorely need.

It is not an exaggeration to say that our collective wellbeing depends on the future of quality healthcare delivery. Not to mention that we can work towards rendering derogatory terms like ‘pink ghetto’ obsolete!