Healthcare Graduates Will Fill Nursing Shortage

On June 3, Sharon Davis will have turned her layoff after 27 years of work as a medical technician at St. Christopher's Hospital from a career crisis to a long-lasting opportunity. She will graduate from the Practical Nursing Program of the District 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund, which helped pay tuition bills. She already has her state license and a new job in hand. Ms Davis is one of more than 1,100 women and men who will be celebrated at Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center, at 6 p.m., Tuesday, June 3, during the 24th annual graduation by the Training Fund, a center of training and education for workers in healthcare and human services affiliated with the National Union of hospital and Health Care Employees. The graduation will be presided over by Henry Nicholas, president of the union's local chapter, District 1199C, and of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, AFCSME, AFL-CIO. Mr. Nicholas will recognize the accomplishments of 39 graduates of the Adult Diploma Program, who have received their high school diploma, 48 graduates of high-skilled nursing programs in Practical Nursing, 150 Nurse Aide graduates; 48 students who have completed associate's, bachelor's and master's degree programs; and 900 students completing preparatory classes or programs for careers in nursing, allied health, and human services. Most graduates have spent some of their time in classrooms at the Training Fund's Breslin Learning Center, at Broad and Chestnut streets, but others have used funding provided by or through the Training Fund to study at more than 40 of the region's healthcare and medical universities, colleges, schools and programs. Graduates are among more than 16,000 adults served by the Training Fund each year, half of them members of the healthcare union but the other half members of the community. Some graduates, like Ms Davis, have studied full-time, but most have conducted their studies while working, either in entry-level jobs in healthcare or elsewhere in the regional economy. Vanessa Smith-Doughty has been another full-time student; she will graduate, with honors, with a bachelor's degree in nursing from La Salle University, having used a full-time scholarship awarded by the healthcare union. Ms Doughty has been a union member for more than 20 years, working at Medical College of Philadelphia-Hahnemann University Hospital for that time, as a licensed practical nurse. She serves as a union delegate for Medical College members of District 1199C, and fellow members have elected her to the Executive Board of the union. Her duties at Medical College will likely change to supervision, and she is eligible to be an instructor in nursing programs like those at the Training Fund and nursing schools. As adult students, either working or seeking work in healthcare, graduates of 1199C programs share complicated life stories, including that of going back in school while working hard as parents to help their children make progress in school. The combination of roles (student, worker and parent) along with the complications -- and obstacles -- binds these students together like any companions on a long and difficult voyage. Some graduates are twenty-something or in their thirties or forties; others are in their seventies. Dorothy Fulcher is 72, a union member, who worked as a housekeeper at Temple Hospital for 17 years. Like other older adults, she had trouble passing the test required for a General Equivalency Development (GED) certificate, so she turned her efforts to the Training Fund's Adult Diploma Program (ADP), finishing two years' of independent study in a year. She was determined to get the degree she needs to assist in her family's childcare center. The Training Fund is an educational agency, created in 1974 and managed by a Board of Trustees, with equal representation of union members and the employers who contribute 1.5 percent of annual budgets for worker salaries to operate training programs. The Fund, a trust enabled by the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendment to federal labor law, derives half its income from employer contributions and half from local, state, and federal government grants and private contributions.