HCA Healthcare Fellowships Help Nursing Administration Students Thrive
By Julia Hettiger
UTEP Marketing and Communications
In 2022, UTEP and HCA Healthcare established a partnership to create graduate nursing fellowships at UTEP to advance healthcare administration in the region. One year later, the program is supporting 22 students after welcoming its third HCA Healthcare Nursing Fellowship cohort of future nursing and healthcare administrators.
“Through the HCA Fellowship Program, we’re able to expand opportunities in healthcare leadership for our students,” said Leslie Robbins, Ph.D., dean of the College of Nursing. “Our fellows represent the best and brightest of our students, and the opportunities awarded to them allow them to reach for their career goals as they work full-time, raise families and make an indelible impact on our healthcare community.”
Through a $750,000 commitment from HCA Healthcare, UTEP and HCA Healthcare created the HCA Healthcare Nursing Fellowship for UTEP graduate students enrolled in the master’s program in Nursing Administration and Management. Students are selected based on information they provide in their application, including their GPA and statement of intent. As fellows, these students gain opportunities for scholarships, leadership development and internships with HCA Healthcare facilities in El Paso and Austin as well as the company’s corporate office in Nashville, Tennessee.
“HCA Healthcare’s partnership with UTEP is part of our $10 million commitment to support Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions in order to advance diversity in healthcare,” said Sherri Neal, chief diversity officer of HCA Healthcare. “In addition to providing students with access to meaningful careers, the program is having a positive impact on the El Paso community by helping to develop a diverse pipeline of healthcare professionals, including nurses, to support the local community and beyond.”
The opportunities presented to fellows, including programs offered online and the financial assistance that is often not available for advanced degrees, are helping to open doors that might have otherwise been locked for students. Susana Ramos, who is in the incoming third cohort, is grateful for the opportunity to be a fellow.
“As I’m just beginning, I’m excited for the [financial] relief it provides,” Ramos said.
The majority of the fellows work full-time. A handful of them are also parents, balancing parenting with work and school. Melissa Calderwood, a member of the second cohort, is grateful that the program is designed to support fellows’ professional and personal lives.
“It’s designed to also have a full-time job at the same time,” Calderwood said. “You don’t have to quit or go part-time to do this degree. You can continue working and have your personal life at the same time.”
Classes in the graduate program are structured as seven-week courses. Students take one course at a time, allowing them to focus on the subject matter while still maintaining busy lives.
“It seems like a lot, but if it’s broken down into little weekly tasks, like I just need one discussion this week or one paper this week that I’ve already been researching from week one, it’s a lot easier to balance,” Calderwood said.
The unique cohort structure of the HCA Healthcare Nursing Fellowship also provides an opportunity for nurses across different fields and hospitals in the region to connect with and learn from one another.
“It’s nice to see the different faces of people who are going through different walks of their nursing career,” Calderwood said. “We’re all going through different things, and we bring different pieces to different experiences. You can kind of support each other in that sense.”
But this program is not just innovative for the students involved. Nursing was one of the many industries impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Burn out, stress and oftentimes a lack of resources resulted in many nurses either leaving the profession or leaving El Paso to practice elsewhere. The fellowship program is helping to close gaps created by this cultural shift by providing future administrators with the resources they need to succeed and obtain their career goals of working in healthcare and nursing administration while living and working in the community they call home.
Sharleen Betancourt, assistant chief nursing officer for the HCA-affiliate Las Palmas Del Sol Healthcare, where many of the cohort students obtain experience, said this program, through its innovative learning options and financial assistance, is helping students to gain further experience in the field and paving the way for the future of healthcare, especially in the El Paso region. Through programs like this one, the staff at Las Palmas Del Sol Healthcare work to ensure the student experience is a good one, so that more and more individuals stay and become interested in the nursing field.
“We put in a lot of attention into the partnership with UTEP to get those great nurses in the program,” Betancourt said. “We have an advisory committee that we’ve started because there are a lot of people who are coming into the nursing profession, but they’re turning and burning pretty rapidly. And so we’re always trying to identify what we can do better.”
As the third and newest cohort enters the fellowship program, the students in all three cohorts are excited to connect with one another and take advantage of the opportunities presented to them.
“I’m a new grad, and now I’m in a master’s [program],” said Alexis Aguilar, a student in the second cohort who completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at UTEP in December 2022. “But having this supplement helps because I have something to my name that’s not just at a basic level. I’ll have more management experience. I’ll be good looking out there in the job world.”
To learn more about UTEP’s MSN in Nursing Administration and Management program, visit https://www.utep.edu/programs/graduate/nursing-admin-management-msn.html.