Nursing students serve New Mexico and fight against COVID-19
By Angel Salcedo
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NEW MEXICO (KOAT) — Our state is one of many facing a severe nursing shortage, and COVID-19 has made becoming a nurse a tough sell. UNM Dean Christine Kasper calls it a ‘national crisis.’
New Mexico’s up-and-coming nurses are up for the challenge. Mia DiIenno and Sophia Sagert are nursing students at UNM, and they’ve both studied through the pandemic.
“I’m working through the pandemic right now. I work at UNM hospitals at the trauma step down,” says DiIenno.
Although the job has gotten harder, they say it’s shaped them.
Sagert says, “if anything, it’s increased, just my desire to become a nurse even more.”
The New Mexico Hospital Association says we’ve lost nurses in 30 of our state’s hospitals to travel nursing jobs.
They’re getting paid in many places, $200 an hour,” says Kasper.
UNM is working to graduate more nurses, but more importantly, set their careers in New Mexico.
Sagert says, “it’s asked, ‘do you have an interest of staying in this state, and working with this population.'”
Dean Kasper says, “95 percent of our students, both graduate, and undergraduate, stay in the state.”
It’s serving New Mexicans that pushes the next generation of nurses forward.
DiIenno says, “we both bleed UNM. When we take out that breathing tube and our patients can breathe on their own, we all celebrate together.”
“You have an opportunity to touch people’s lives,” Sagert says.
To help with the nursing shortage, u-n-m has also started a freshman entry program, and it allows freshmen students to be accepted into the university as soon as they apply.
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