NHSC scholarship are very valuable to nursing students. Each year the NHSC awards approximately 400 scholarships to eligible health professionals. The NHSC provides incentives for health professionals to serve in HPSAs. Many other HPSA areas are inner cities. At present, there are 2677 primary care HPSAs.
More scholars increases the number of HPSAs served.
Moreover, the scholarship program fills positions in the most difficult, hard-to place urban and rural communities. Studies conducted over the past twenty years have shown that PAs, NPs, and CNMs provide high quality primary health care. Numerous studies have concluded that PAs, NPs and CNMs can provide a substantial majority of care that primary care physicians provide, allowing the physician to devote attention to more medically complex or severe illnesses. Recent research indicates that the quality of care provided by NPs and CNMs is comparable to the primary care provided by physicians. Continued scholarship support for the education of PAs, NPs, and CNMs makes sound fiscal sense because their education costs tend to be far less than the cost of educating physicians.