The Capital region, and all of Michigan, in fact, has a nursing shortage. Meanwhile, the military is retiring soldiers with vast medical knowledge and experience but without credentials enabling them to get good jobs.
An effort is afoot in Lansing to change that picture.
Lansing Community College (LCC) has just been notified it will get $190,000 in federal funding to help returning military medics get meaningful jobs in the nursing 
field. Ultimately, the school will help the medics get certification based on what they have already learned, and then give them a year of concentrated training to become licensed practical nurses or registered nurses, says Margie Clark, chair of the LCC Nursing Careers Department.
In the first phase, LCC will prepare lesson plans to transition military-trained medics to civilian paramedic certification. Clark expects more funding will follow to teach the classes.
A state government initiative called Project MOVE recently tracked separated military people, noting their education and acquired skills. The study found 500 people who would have qualified as health specialists but who left the service with no academic credit.
“If they’d just been given the licensing exams. . . ” Clark says.
She knows of a janitor in the Capital region who has years of military medical experience but who cannot find a decent job because he lacks credentials.
The LCC classes will allow such people to refresh and confirm their knowledge, attend fast-track nursing classes, and move on into good jobs, Clark says.
She projects the actual classes will begin in January, 2011. Some of the military medics will qualify for paid tuition, books and fees under the G.I. Bill, administered by the federal Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
On completion, they will move into the field where one-third of nurses in Michigan today are over age 55.
Source: Margie Clark, Lansing Community College
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie
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