The past year has been less than an ideal time for students to graduate and join the workforce.
That is, except for students who attended nursing school like Lauren Mervine.
"The job hunt was actually pretty easy for me," she said Tuesday after a shift at her new job at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
Mervine is one of 19 students to graduate from the inaugural class of the College of Nursing at the Texas A&M Health Science Center in December. The school recently announced that all have passed their National Council Licensure Examination to become registered nurses and all have already secured jobs.
"I think we gave the curriculum a lot of thought and tried to produce the best nurses we could, and it says I have excellent faculty that are really dedicated to the students doing well and I think it means we are really turning out top-notch students," said Dr. Sharon Wilkerson, dean of the College of Nursing.
It also is a sign of how strong the job market is for nurses, Wilkerson said.
"There is certainly a need for nurses," she said. "Some locations are in better shape than others. Rural areas are just desperate and a lot of states are having trouble."
According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the nursing workforce is rapidly aging and there will be a shortage of 260,000 nurses in 15 years.
That need has been tempered slightly during the current recession.
"Right now the market is a little bit slower because of the economy and a lot of people who thought they were going to retire didn't," Wilkerson said.
There also is a considerable amount of uncertainty among people in the medical profession because of pending health care legislation that has stalled in Congress. But for Mervine, she said she is confident in her career choice, especially as she sees the struggles of other people around her.
"I definitely feel like I made the smart choice," she said.
The 23-year-old was a psychology major at A&M before joining the nursing school. She said she was interested in the medical field because she likes "the adrenaline rush that comes when someone needed help."
"There was nowhere else I would rather have been than at A&M and doing what I wanted to do," she said."
Meanwhile, Wilkerson said A&M's Health Science Center will continue to expand in hopes of brining more people into nursing. The newest class at A&M has more than 30 students and the college expects to open a campus in Round Rock this June.
She said she hopes the college will continue to have the success it did with its small first class.
"They have set the bar very high," Wilkerson said.
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