Gov. Ron DeSantis announced additional funding Tuesday for a nursing pipeline program that provides scholarships.
The governor said the $20 million will go toward the Linking Industry to Nursing Education, or LINE, program. LINE provides matching funds to educational institutions to boost nursing education and address Florida’s nursing shortage.
The program is a state-funded competitive grant program that offers dollar-for-dollar matching funds for student scholarships, faculty recruitment, equipment and simulation centers to boost nursing program capacity and graduates.
The total amount of LINE funding for this fiscal year, including the $20 million announced Tuesday, is $44.5 million.
Most of the additional money, about $14.5 million, will go to state colleges and private universities providing nursing education. The rest will go to Florida state universities with nursing programs.
In Central Florida, $6.8 million will go to eight state colleges and private universities: AdventHealth University, Barry University, Daytona State College, Keiser University, Polk State College, Rasmussen University, Seminole State College and Valencia College.
Nursing programs at the University of Central Florida will receive another $737,500.
In a statement, Seminole State College celebrated the funding: “The funds from the State are used primarily for equipment purchases, faculty training, student scholarships and nursing licensure exam prep. This grant will also fund new loaner laptops for students in the nursing program.”
DeSantis said initiatives like LINE are working. LINE started in 2022. It was established by Senate Bill 2524, with the goal of encouraging more young people to enter nursing.
“We're now producing 1,000 plus additional nurses than we were before, every year between our state colleges and our state universities. And so that's a meaningful increase,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said he saw firsthand the shortage of nurses and other healthcare professionals during the COVID pandemic, along with a nursing shortage driven by private nursing companies who poach nurses away from hospitals for short-term nursing stints in other states.
Plus, he said he heard a lot about the profession growing up at home, from a reliable firsthand source.
“My mother was a nurse for 40-some years. They weren't paying that much money then on these things. And she was very good, too,” DeSantis said.
Watch the governor’s press conference here announcing the additional funding for nursing education:
The Florida Hospital Association predicts there will be a shortage in the state of almost 60,000 nurses by 2035.
The FHA says a number of factors, including high turnover and vacancy rates, burnout, high levels of stress, low exam pass rates and an aging population are all to blame for the shortage.
But Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, said there are signs of hope. He oversees the state’s public universities, including public universities with nursing programs.
Rodrigues said the system’s passage rate for the NCLEX, the licensure exam for nurses, is 94%. The national passage rate is 92%. Even more important, he said, is that over 90% of bachelors in nursing student graduates in Florida find a job within one year of graduation.
“Larger programs, more students, greater capacity, higher graduation rates, higher passage rates, and higher employment rates. That’s what is going to make the state strong and keep us strong,” Rodrigues said.
Along with the LINE program, Florida also has a program called Prepping Institutions, Programs, Employers, and Learners through Incentives for Nursing Education or PIPELINE which offers performance based funding to public nursing education programs to boost nursing education, increase graduates, and improve NCLEX pass rates.
Read more about the schools that received funding below:
The University/Healthcare Partner grants total $6 million, including programs not listed here. Source: Florida Department of Education
