With reports of a nursing shortage in the United States coming from publications as noteworthy as the Journal of the American Medical Association, Fairfield University was especially pleased to welcome the largest incoming freshman class that it has had for several years. It's nice to buck that trend. Meanwhile, she notes, a trend moving in the right direction is the number of adult learners who are turning to nursing.
National data suggests more adult learners are turning to nursing.
They turn to nursing because it's the sense of doing for, of giving back, of really making a contribution and affecting people's lives in a positive sense. One such example is John Orazietti who decided to pursue a nursing degree after he was involved in a near-fatal car accident. He had applied his first degree in industrial technology to a variety of jobs in the printing industry where he spent 14 years. But lying in bed following the accident, unable at first to walk, he did a lot of soul searching. He decided to follow the lead of family members in the health care field and, following his completion of the Fairfield program, began working in the cardio-thoracic Intensive Care Unit at St. Raphael's Hospital in New Haven.