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CTV News
7 days ago
- Sport
- CTV News
Hope Volleyball Summerfest serves up fun and support for charity at Mooney's Bay
The sweltering heat in the nation's capital wasn't enough to keep thousands of volleyball enthusiasts indoors. A sea of players filled the courts at Mooney's Bay on Saturday for the annual Hope Volleyball Summerfest. There are more than 600 teams and 6,000 players playing on the courts this year. Hope Volleyball Summerfest is one of the largest one-day beach volleyball events in the world and it's something players look forward to every year. One of those is Jaime Sharma, playing with her work colleagues. 'Support a great cause. Be here as a team,' she said of why she joined. In their second year attending the event, she says it's fun with them no matter what. 'I think we're losing right now, but the vibe is strong,' she said. 'We keep trying. We're staying positive. We're reframing our losses.' While it's all fun and games for the players, it's also important for the charities who rely on the event. Laura Andrews, executive director Hope Volleyball Summerfest, says more than $100,000 will be raised this year. She says more than $4.75 million has been raised since it began 43 years ago for local charities. 'The people that keep coming back here year after year – I can't thank them enough,' she said. 'It's amazing,' she says of the numbers raised. 'Every year, it's absolutely amazing.' The charities being supported this year include Upstream Ottawa, the Ottawa Humane Society, the Centre for Treatment of Sexual Abuse and Childhood Trauma, The Door Youth Centre and Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa (YSB). Andrews says that every charity has a project they apply for. Malik Ayass, executive director of the Door Youth Centre located on Somerset Street West, says the funding is extremely important. 'Without the support of the community and the volunteers and a third-party funder like volleyball, it's impossible for us to manage and keep our doors open without such support,' he said. 'It means a lot to us and we're very grateful for everybody.' Patti Murphy with the Youth Services Bureau Foundation says the money will go towards their life skills programming for youth who live in their shelters, which includes teaching youth how to cook and budget. 'We know that funds coming in are from individuals or from companies, small and large,' said Murphy. 'Having that care come back to us in a really fun environment like today in the hot sun and the music going, It's really beautiful. It feels like a big family picnic, honestly.' The final fundraising total won't be clear for a few days as organizers work to count all the donations but Andrews says people can continue to donate online.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Amid critical shortage of nurses in CT, colleges step in. Despite major strides, ‘we're in a pickle'
As nursing shortages remain an issue in the U.S. and Connecticut, university programs continue to grow in the state and $2.9 million in federal funding has been obtained to train nurses and create opportunities for frontline health care professionals. Still, experts say there is work to be done. Nursing programs at UConn, Fairfield University, Sacred Heart University, University of Hartford and Quinnipiac University received the most qualified applications for four-year schools in the state, according to the 2024 Connecticut Center for Nursing Workforce report that collected data in 2023. The report shows 2,181 graduates in 2023. 'For state projections with acute care hospitals, long-term care hospitals, nursing homes, community-based public health nurses where numbers are sustainable and safe, we need to graduate about 3,000 nurses a year from our programs. We fall a little bit short,' said Dr. Laura Andrews, an associate professor of nursing at Yale University and chair of the Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing. 'In 2023, there were 2,935 eligible seats in nursing programs in Connecticut and there were about 11,600 applicants,' Andrews said. 'More than half were admitted, 6,165, but only 2,682 took up those letters of acceptance. We're in a pickle.' Andrews, who is also a part-time nurse practitioner at the Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain, said she saw the nursing numbers plateau in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic and witnessed a massive departure from the field during the pandemic. 'It was scary enough for us at the hospital and in nursing homes and in the community to deal with a lot of the unknown of the disease. A lot of that played into nursing leaving the field and fewer nursing school applicants,' Andrews said. 'If you look at Connecticut now, there are almost 90,000 registered nurses and about half are practicing nursing. If you look at the studies why nurses leave, is that it's physically and mentally demanding work. We do nights, weekends and holidays. We lose a lot of time with our families.' The number of working registered nurses decreased nationally by more than 100,000 from 2020 to 2021, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Health Resources and Services Administration said there are projected national shortages until 2037. The report shows there will be a 10% shortage of registered nurses by 2027 and by 2037 improving to a 6% deficit. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 194,500 openings for registered nurses are projected each year, on average, until 2033. 'Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire,' the bureau said. 'We are looking at a shortage for the next 10-15 years,' said Caryl Ryan, the chief nursing officer and chief operating officer at UConn Health. 'We have an older population still working. We have seen a big retirement number over the past two years, and we are expecting to see more of that. Then you will get less nurses that want to do frontline nursing and want to go into specialties earlier. I don't think the shortage is going to go away.' Yale's Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing (GEFN) program graduated 67 people last year and will be up to 97 graduates this year with an increase in applications. The undergraduate program produces about 130-150 nurses a year, according to Andrews. Andrews said most graduates begin their career in acute care at least for a little while and then some leave to work in primary care or community services and skilled nursing facilities. She added that there is a big demand for midwifery and primary care. 'There has been a big push to graduate primary care providers because our health care system is a little messed up these days and we have to start doing a better job at preventative care for people,' Andrews said. 'The fear that the numbers will not stabilize and not increase to where they need to be for adequate staffing,' she added. 'Research shows one of the number one prevention of hospital morbidity and mortality is (an) inadequate nursing-patient ratio.' According to a Nurse Journal report from last year, Connecticut is slightly above the national average of a 9.22 nursing-to-patient ratio with 9.46. Ryan said nurses in operating rooms are the biggest shortage in recent years. In recent years, UConn Health has started new intern programs for college students. 'Only in the last three years have we started to have intern programs that we actually have clinical rotations in the (operating room),' said Ryan, who is also the interim vice president for John Dempsey Hospital. 'We also have certain programs offered to students for their senior year, their Capstone Projects that they can do in the OR. We are doing more of that now. We do have a graduate program for our OR now, which we didn't have three years ago.' Ryan said it takes new nurses about a year to become accustomed to being in the operating room. 'We are playing catch-up right now,' Ryan said. 'The nursing sects in the state are working well with the deans of the schools to ensure we have a stronger workforce of nurses coming into the school. One of those directions is working with nurses to obtain their associate's degree to BSN. We want to put more students in the OR and have nursing rotations. We are doing a lot of work in those areas right now,' she added. Ryan said during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, John Dempsey Hospital's two operating rooms had as many as 25 travel nurses between the hospital's two operating rooms. That number has dropped in half and will drop to as low as 10 after new college graduates come off of orientation in the next couple of months. 'COVID did a lot to provide negatives and positives to the profession of nursing. It showed our most intense moments, and it showed our biggest challenges and then it was such rewarding times. Many hospitals went through turnover at that time,' Ryan said, adding that there were nursing shortages before the pandemic, and COVID heightened that shortfall in the critical care areas. 'When you are taking in new nurses, you also have to train new nurses. Education has really been the key, giving these new nurses the type of medical and clinical education they need to take care of critical care patients,' she said. 'I would say during the last year of COVID and post-COVID there have been tremendous shortages and in the last year has been the time frame that we made bigger strides in our vacancy replacement.' Ryan said the hospital currently has 850 nurses in its workforce. 'We all had severe turnover during this period and all hospitals had partial to a healthy recovery. We are not where we need to be, but we are recovering. I think retirements and regulatory and fiscal impacts and budgets will be hardships for nursing and for all staff in health care,' Ryan said. Ryan, who has been at UConn Health for 39 years, said many recent nursing graduates are prioritizing work-life balance and many want to work remotely at discharge clinics or surgery centers. 'Before you needed a great deal of experience before you could work in the surgery center. You used to have had to work in an ICU or critical care experience. Now surgery centers, because of staffing shortages, they've been hiring nurses right out of school. They can be working in discharge clinics and certain clinics that are remote. That takes away from what the hospitals can get from frontline nursing,' Ryan said. 'Frontline nursing is an art. It's a science. It's really hard work. I think that is why you see this generation within their first year of working in a clinical area getting themselves to get back into school to be an APRN so that they can work as a provider much sooner than they used to,' she added. Paula Dowd, the dean of nursing and Health Professions at CT State, said CT State has worked to be 'nimble to the needs of our health care industry partners to try to fill that nursing gap.' Connecticut State Community College has all 12 of the state's community colleges under its umbrella after a merger in 2023. Dowd said CT State graduates are staying in Connecticut, and the program provides 65% of all associate degree RNs in the state every year. Dowd said the bulk of graduates aren't only staying in the state, but they are also staying in the communities where they are studying. Dowd said the state has six accredited RN programs over 12 campuses, and she said the state students 'get out of the gate running.' 'We have a 96% pass rate for the RN national licensure exam (NCLEX) and CT State was just approved as the first credit-bearing Licensed Practical Nursing program (LPN) at a public institution of higher learning in the state expected to start in June 2025 at the Quinebaug Valley campus,' Dowd said. From 2022 and 2024, the program has graduated more than 1,500 students, according to Dowd. 'We want to increase our seat capacity and also maintain a robust curriculum. We don't want to increase seat capacity just to increase seat capacity. We want to make sure these students graduate and are successful,' Dowd said. 'It's common knowledge that there is a nursing shortage and there is a push for all constituents to help increase nursing program offerings,' Dowd said. 'Health care isn't like some industries,' Dowd added. 'We have a lot of oversight as we should. We have oversight by the Connecticut Public Health, we have over CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) we have licensure, oversight program accreditation. We are in tune with that, but we are still able to grow our programs by listening to the voices of the needs of Connecticut.' Dr. Victoria Vaughan Dickson, a dean and professor at UConn School of Nursing and a professor for the Department of Medicine at UConn School of Medicine, said the university is also responding to this shortage. 'UConn School of Nursing, as a premier school of nursing in our region, has responded to this by increasing the number of students in our undergraduate four-year traditional program and our accelerated bachelor of science program that is geared toward students that already have a bachelor's degree and come in with one year of heavy additional coursework necessary to earn a bachelor's of science,' Dickson said. Dickson said UConn School of Nursing has had an increase in application. UConn applications increased 32% in 2023 and 44% in 2024. UConn also has 4,600 applicants for the fall semester for an incoming class of about 225 students this fall. 'What we have seen is a doubling in class size and we are continuing to grow that cohort with exceptional education and experiences that prepare them with high quality,' Dickson said. The UConn School of Nursing has plans to open a new, five-story, 92,000-square-foot building in the fall of 2026. There will be over 13,000 feet of clinical simulations that will feature flexible simulation rooms that will have virtual reality simulations, home care simulations and skills labs. 'We will have cutting-edge facilities for nursing education and simulation and experience and high-quality space for research as well flexible and innovative learning experiences,' Dickson said. 'This helps us to prepare future nurses who will be ready for their clinical practices when they go on to their new jobs.' Dickson said within the two years the school will be producing 250 undergraduates per year in UConn's four-year traditional program. This past year, the accelerator program had its best-ever number of 147 graduates , and the graduate program is producing about 200 graduates per year. 'The 250 undergraduates doubled what we have graduated in the past,' Dickson said. 'For many years, we were graduating in the 130 range. We are rapidly increasing our class size for our undergraduates. We have been able to do that because of the plan to increase space as well as a number of funding opportunities from the state as well as the CT Health Horizon's grant, which helped us to increase our facility for the accelerated program.' Dickson said the accelerator program will produce about 200 more nurses into the workforce within the next year.
