One of the largest private nursing schools in America, Galen College of Nursing has had campuses in Miami and Tampa Bay for some time. Three years ago, it added new campuses in Gainesville and Sarasota. And now it’s just opened another one in Orlando.
Why is Galen suddenly so active in Florida? It’s because of the projected nursing shortage that this state faces in the decade ahead.
“Half of the people that are moving to Florida are 60 years old or greater. So that’s putting a significant strain on health care, because as we age, we need to access more health care,” says Galen CEO Mark Vogt. “With the advances that we’re making in medicine, people are living longer. When people access health care, they’re sicker, they have multiple things going on at the same time, and the complexity of care is higher. So all of that snowballs, and you need more nurses.”
But Galen serves a different crowd than your typical nursing school. At a traditional public university, the average age of a nursing student is 20. At Galen, the average age is 30. Galen is geared toward students who are coming to nursing later in life. About 40% have children, and most are working at least 20 hours a week.
“You have to meet them where they are in life,” Vogt says. That means more flexibility in scheduling, live tutors at all hours, more out-of-classroom resources. That means providing things like nighttime “micro-lectures” where students can listen to shorter versions of lectures they heard earlier in the day.
Why open a 43,000-sq.-ft. campus in Orlando? Because of the region’s tremendous population growth. Why open a campus in Gainesville, where the University of Florida already exists? Because nurses are still needed there. “The reality is, most of those (UF) students are from out of town, and they don’t stay there after graduation,” Vogt says.
Some Galen facts:
- It has 18,000 students across 25 campuses.
- Galen is owned by HCA Healthcare, and most of its graduates — but not all — go on to work for HCA. Galen students get clinical experience at HCA hospitals as well as other partners like long-term care facilities.
- Galen touts its students’ high passing rate on the NCLEX, the national nurse licensing exam. (This has been an issue for some privately owned nursing schools in Florida.) Vogt says the Miami, Gainesville and Sarasota campuses have a 100% first-time passing rate, and the Tampa Bay campus has a 90% first-time passing rate.
Might Galen keep expanding to more locations in Florida? Certainly. “If you told me that no one else is moving to Florida, I would probably say five campuses is enough,” Vogt says. “The reality is, we are always looking at communities in the state of Florida.”
According to Vogt, Galen’s mission is to produce competent, confident, compassionate nurses who are ready to practice medicine safely.
“Nursing is scary. You’re taking care of humans,” he says. “We think nursing is an art form. People will forget what you did for them, but they won’t forget how you made them feel.”