Sen. Jacky Rosen, second right, D-Nev., responds to a question from a reporter after touring the UNLV School of Nursing Clinical Simulation Center Thursday, March 28, 2024. Rosen is promoting her bipartisan Train More Nurses Act that was recently passed by the U.S. Senate. Listening from left are: Dr. Rustin Park, chief of nursing at Desert Winds Hospital, Dr. Imelda Reyes, interim dean of the UNLV School of Nursing, and Dr. Lisa Nicholas, right, simulation education director.
Friday, March 29, 2024 | 2 a.m.
UNLV nursing students dressed in bright red scrubs were hard at work Thursday at the university’s Clinical Simulation Center, where aspiring nurses can participate in real-life scenarios by treating mannequin patients.
In this case, their patient was a dummy named Emily Kent, a woman experiencing preeclampsia, or high-blood pressure during pregnancy. As the nursing students began taking Kent’s vitals, they also asked her questions about her symptoms.
“I don’t want to have my baby today,” someone on the opposite side of a two-way glass said into a microphone, play-acting as the voice of Kent. “Help me.”
U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., observed the students acting out the simulation, conversing with UNLV officials about the technology behind the simulation, the training process overall and recalling her own experience as a mother in the delivery room.
The simulation was just one stop on Rosen’s tour of the center, which she visited Thursday to promote the Train More Nurses Act, legislation that she and her colleagues initially introduced last year and was unanimously passed by the Senate in January.
The bipartisan bill, which Rosen collaborated on with Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mike Braun, R-Ind., is aimed at combating a nationwide nursing shortage by directing the secretary of labor to conduct a review of all nursing grant programs to find ways to increase faculty at nursing schools nationwide and widening the pathway to becoming a registered nurse, according to a release.
“They’re very modest about what they do,” Rosen said of the UNLV instructors at the simulation center. “But let me tell you, they really are the backbone of training men and women who want to go into this incredibly caring and important profession — and so, I want to do everything I can to support it.”
The bill, in addition to $400,000 that Rosen helped secure in the bipartisan government funding package for updating UNLV training equipment, will provide a variety of grant opportunities, Rosen said.
“What we want to do is be sure that we create that pipeline for people who want to train nurses, so more people can become nurses,” Rosen said. “So it goes hand in hand.”
Without teachers and educators, there can’t be more people in the medical pipeline, she said, and everyone who needs to seek medical care wants to know that they’re being treated by someone trained well and with care.
“We have such a shortage of medical professionals,” said Rosen, who noted that Nevada was short about 4,000 nurses. “We need to invest in them. Let people know these are great careers — you can stay here at home, you can do these things, you can provide support, and help for your community and take care of your family.”
A large portion of nursing educators are baby boomers and will retire soon, so there’s an impending need for more of them, said Lisa Nicholas, assistant professor and simulation education director in UNLV’s School of Nursing.
“Her being here just shows that the state is behind us,” Nicholas said of Rosen’s visit. “And that’s really important.”
Imelda Reyes, interim dean of the UNLV School of Nursing, added that the bill would allow her department to provide the state of Nevada with a “really strong workforce.” She noted that every semester the program is graduating more students, and 90% of them stay in-state for work.
“Here at UNLV, we’re very diverse, which I think is excellent for the state as well,” said Reyes, who noted there were currently 700 people in the program. “So we’re producing nurses that reflect the community that we serve.”
The Train More Nurses Act will go to the U.S. House of Representatives next, where it will hopefully pass and then eventually be signed into law by the president, Rosen said.
There’s a need for more care everywhere, she said, from nurses to physicians to medical technicians, and investing in them means investing in our health communities and lives.
“They are the hands-on care, they are the folks that hold your hand,” Rosen said of nurses. “We just saw a simulator of a woman having a baby — they hold your hand when you’re giving birth, they hold your hand in hospitals, maybe at your deathbed and everything in between. And so it’s really important that they have the training and the tools.”
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