Strengthening our regional workforce and supporting local nursing schools, are generous funding efforts to help young students get their nursing degrees—the latest effort to counter a critical and prolonged nursing shortage in Florida. Concerns are mounting over whether there will be enough nurses here to care for the largest generation living today, retiring Baby Boomers. “The American Nurses Association estimates that the U.S. will need to train more than a million new nurses by 2022 to care for the growing population and replace the wave of the nation’s most experienced nurses who are retiring.” With the situation proving to be most alarming in Florida, where the number of residents over age 65 comes out to twice our national average.

In response, the local Suncoast Nursing Action Coalition (SNAC) is hosting an event at The Community Foundation of Sarasota County on Wednesday August 15 at 11:00AM. There, SNAC plans to announce 22 scholarship recipients who will receive $74,000 this year to help boost the local nursing workforce and nursing school faculty on the Suncoast. Recipients will get the chance to meet the donors who made the funding possible, and share their personal stories of how this grant is going to help them achieve their dreams of a nursing career.

Former Chief Nursing Officer at Sarasota Memorial Health Care System and co-chair of SNAC, Jan Mauck, will present the awards. “Nurses represent our first line of defense—their vigilance and skill at the bedside keeps patients safe and promote the best health outcomes,” she says. “With our population growth, and population living longer, we need to do all we can to boost the nursing workforce in our community and prepare our nurses for the challenges ahead.”

Suncoast Nursing Action Coalition