As hospitals in the state have struggled during the pandemic to cover nursing shifts, Patricia Cowan, dean of the UAMS College of Nursing, said nursing students have helped to fill the void, assisting health care workers and helping with vaccine distribution.
One thing that Arkansas and other states have done is give students who might be working as patient care technicians some clinical credit, Cowan said.
"When the vaccination was just coming out, there were about 3,000 hours that student and faculty did that was related to vaccination, covid screening, contact tracing with people who were quarantined," she said.
Shortly after the pandemic began in March 2020, the state Board of Nursing expedited licenses or permits to 300 nurses.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson followed up last fall by fast-tracking licensures and waiving the application fee of 1,104 nursing students so they could help relieve the staffs at Arkansas hospitals.
Sue Tedford, the director of the State Board of Nursing, said numerous adjustments have been made during the pandemic to get more nurses on the front lines.
Among them are:
• Expediting applications for initial and endorsement licensure.
• Awarding registered nurse temporary permits for licensed practical nurses in their final semesters of an registered nurse program.
• Allowing all students in their final semesters of any nursing program to obtain medication assistant-certified certificates.
• Waiving the rule that prohibits medication assistant-certified personnel from working outside of a skilled nursing facility.
• Allowing students to participate in educational preceptorships without being paid.
• Waiving the rule limiting the amount of simulation a nursing education program can include as part of a students' clinical experience.
Even with all of the efforts to get student nurses out in the field quicker, there is no magic solution to the nursing shortage, Tedford said.
"The critical-thinking skills between a novice nurse and an expert nurse are vastly different and this only comes with experience. The last one and a half years have been the most exhausting physical and emotional times that today's nurses have ever experienced," she said.
"A shortage of nurses is not a new problem and didn't just happen due to covid," Tedford said. "We were experiencing a nursing shortage prior to covid, but the demands of this deadly disease has brought this to light for everyone. There are not any quick fixes to the shortage because if there were, we would have taken care of it a long time ago."