Good news for Hispanics who want to become nurses. Federal funding of a half million dollars is targeted at a mentoring program to get more Hispanics into the profession. San Antonio's U.T. Health Science Center School of Nursing is one of the institutions that stands to benefit.
Current statistics are pretty dismal. The U.S. Census Bureau says Hispanics account for 15% of the U.S. population, but they account for less than 2% of the nurses. That's a disparity many people would like to see erased.
In 2000, the UTHSC School of Nursing launched a mentoring program called Junto Podemos (Spanish for "together we can"). It matches second- and third-semester nursing students with first-semester students who are considered at risk for dropping out. The mentors serve as counselors and positive role models to keep promising young Hispanics in school and on track.
The National Association of Hispanic Nurses will target future nurses in Texas, Arizona and California. "The program will be based on the template of Juntos Podemos, the mentoring program that has proven successful at our School of Nursing in San Antonio," explained Norma Martinez Rogers, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, a professor of family nursing care at UTHSC.
