Pima Community College aims to alleviate Arizona’s critical nursing shortage by increasing its education partnership program with Carondelet Health Network, PCC announced Thursday.

The new contract will add two 30-employee cohorts to the existing six cohorts trained through Carondelet. PCC has a similar contract with Tucson Medical Center for five cohorts of hospital employees who want to become nurses.

“Carondelet Health Network and Tucson Medical Center pay the costs of educating their employees to become registered nurses, including providing classroom and skills lab space and clinical faculty,” according to a news release from Lou Albert, president of PCC’s West Campus. “Most of the coursework is delivered at the hospitals (which) is important because we do not have sufficient space at the campus.”

The college’s nursing program is housed at its West Campus, 2202 W. Anklam Road, one of six PCC sites throughout Tucson.

PCC typically admits between 100 and 130 students into its regular nursing program each semester. Nearly 500 nursing students are attending PCC, with 105 participating in one of the existing contracts with Carondelet or TMC at no cost to PCC.

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