Foundations, major donors tackle nation’s nursing shortage

As more nurses leave their jobs in hospitals and health-care centers, foundations are pouring millions of dollars into efforts to ensure that more stay in the profession and get more out of the job than just the applause and pats on the back they got during the bleakest days of the pandemic.

Philanthropic pledges announced this year to help nurses and the nursing profession include:

— A $125 million donation in February from Leonard Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, to the University of Pennsylvania to create a tuition-free program that eventually will train 40 nurses a year. The gift is designed to extend for decades.

— United Health Foundation, which said in June it would devote $100 million to finance the training of 10,000 nursing and other clinical students who are people of color or have low incomes

— In June, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation added $3.8 million to its Future of Nursing campaign, a 10-year effort run with AARP and the AARP Foundation that has made nearly $70 million in grants. The latest grant installment will focus on improving access to care and attracting people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to the nursing work force.

— The American Nurses Foundation announced in May its $19 million commitment, which the nonprofit hopes can help make nurses’ lives easier and improve their ability to provide top-notch health care. Projects include programming robots to take care of some of the routine aspects of nursing and providing extra training to nurses before they are thrown into the pell-mell of the hospital floor or busy clinic.

That extra instruction could have helped nurses like Muroo Hamed, who worked grueling hours in difficult circumstances through the early stages of the pandemic. Fresh out of nursing school and on...