NEW ORLEANS
Louisiana State University’s nursing school is getting $1.2 million to boost the number of nurses trained to give anesthesia in the New Orleans area.
The grant, from the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will add 25 students over the next three years to the usual class of 40 five in its first year, and 10 in each of the next two years.
“Historically, students who come through the program in Louisiana remain in Louisiana and practice after graduation,” said Laura Bonanno, acting program director for the school’s nurse anesthetist program.
She said about 1,000 to 1,100 nurses around the state have taken the graduate course in anesthesia. The students to be added from this grant will be from minority and disadvantaged groups, and the aim is to provide care to ethnically diverse areas which don’t have enough doctors and nurses.
The grant also will pay to teach about 55 nursing school faculty members about the special nursing needs of people in different cultures. For instance, Bonanno said, a Vietnamese woman may want a relative to make decisions about her care, and may have specific dietary needs.
–Associated Press
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