EMCC Golden Triangle Campus opens new nursing facility
MAYHEW, Miss. (WCBI) – The number of people pursuing a career in health care has declined.
Despite the numbers, East Mississippi Community College’s Golden Triangle Nursing Program believes it can grow.
“We were able and fortunate enough to move to our new health and science area. Before we opened it up to the public, we wanted to give our faculty and staff a chance to see our new working space,” said Jamonica Johnson, EMCC Golden Triangle Campus Director of Nursing.
The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis projects Mississippi will need more than seven thousand nurses by the year 2030, based on supply and demand.
Nursing students believe the renovated Douglas Building gives them more options for hands-on learning.
“There is a lot of new equipment and different things, and it is high-tech quality stuff and I feel like that really helps a lot. When we get out to the actual clinical setting, It will have us exposed to high-tech things, be able to really work with them and be more exposed to them,” said Morgan Breland, EMCC Golden Triangle Campus Nursing Student.
“I think it is great, and definitely going to be very beneficial because it allows us to be very hands-on, and it prepares us well for clinical. It gives the opportunity to learn so much, and it is as close to the real world as possible,” said Alli Perry, EMCC Golden Triangle Campus Nursing Student.
“With the new and improved equipment, I think it is going to be beneficial to future nursing students. There will be a much less learning curve for when we get into the field, and it is going to teach us how to be better nurses,” said Peyton Brown, EMCC Golden Triangle Campus Nursing Student.
There are numerous nursing scholarships to help combat the shortage, including the Nursing Student Retention Scholarship. It’s designed to keep students in the state.
EMCC’s Director of Nursing Jamonica Johnson hopes a new workspace will also entice new and future health care leaders.
“That is one of our purposes for the updated facility, to be able to offer more to the nursing. In August, we are going to start with an August start date this year and we will have a January and an August start date this year. That will help put more nurses out there to be eligible to take a clinic,” said Johnson.
There are more than 100 nursing students in the EMCC program.
