4C Academy’s Jessica Blanchard warns nursing shortage is on the horizon

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the ninth in a series of 10 stories profiling the non-traditional instructors at the Commodore Conyers College and Career Academy.

ALBANY — Like many of her colleagues profiled earlier in this series, Commodore Conyers College and Career Academy (4CA) Nursing Instructor Jessica Blanchard was drawn to the new school because of what she was seeing from young nursing graduates on the job.

Blanchard spent a combined 13 years working as an ER nurse at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, HCA Palmyra, and Phoebe-Sumter Regional Medical Center.

“I had been teaching at Albany Tech for the past year as an adjunct instructor in Medical Assisting,” Blanchard said. “In the emergency room I’ve always connected with the younger people, they tended to put those patients in my zone because those patients did better with me than they did other nurses. Working in the emergency room I was starting to see a decline in the skill levels of some of the graduate nurses who were coming in.

“I knew the only way to change that was to get into the school system. At Albany Tech I worked with adults and I thought we needed to reach these kids at a younger age.”

The 4CA administration is acutely aware of the coming wave of a need for nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. That is why the academy’s nursing pathway is the only one of 14 with two instructors. The other is Jeanifer Hill.

“Nursing is absolutely critical to this region because we are starting to see baby boomers reach retirement age. We are going to lose a significant number of our nursing workforce when that happens,” Blanchard said. “So not only will we have an older population to care for, we are going to have fewer nurses to care for them.”

Blanchard said that she thinks the future of primary health care lies with smaller community based clinics, especially in rural areas, as is seen now with facilities like Albany Area Primary Health Care.

“We have to move in that direction, we have got to turn more toward primary care, which means our health care providers, especially our nurses, are going to need bachelor’s if not master’s degrees,” Blanchard said. “Advanced nurses, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are clinically trained to be primary health care providers. It’s absolutely where we are headed and it makes all the sense in the world.”

A conversation with a colleague at Albany Tech sent Blanchard to the 4C Academy.

“A friend, Jill Dervan, had applied for the Health Informatics position at the academy and she can back to Albany Tech and told me I should apply. I had met (4CA CEO Chris Hatcher) in January when he gave a presentation about this school at Albany Tech,” Blanchard said. “It sounded interesting, but I didn’t fully comprehend what they wanted to do here.

“But when Jill came back and told me what she had learned, I sent Chris an email saying I wanted to talk about the program. He said we need to interview you, and here I am.”

Blanchard said she was attracted to the academy because it was different from other schools.

“This place is different because we are not just focused on book learning, now that’s important, but we’re also trying to teach these students people skills, communications skills, workforce ready skills,” Blanchard said. “You can not be the most clinically advanced nurse, but if you know how to speak to people and you know how to conduct yourself, and you have work ethics, honor and integrity, then you are going to be successful and learn the rest of it as it comes.”