Building Healthy Communities
Our region needs nurses. EWU’s $100 million ‘Build Our Future’ campaign is prioritizing solutions.
Something was wrong with 6-year-old Anthony Orozco. He was always tired. His belly hurt. He stopped jumping on his trampoline. His skin was turning blue.
Anthony’s dad rushed him to a Yakima clinic. A doctor pushed on his stomach, and Anthony cried out in pain. A nurse held his hand while someone poked his small arm with a long needle. The little hand squeezed the bigger hand: “It’s going to be okay, Anthony,” the nurse said.
Soon the doctor delivered the diagnosis: childhood leukemia, a form of cancer. Anthony and his mom boarded a helicopter that day to Seattle Children’s Hospital. They would spend the next 14 months in treatment there.
Through it all, Anthony remembers friendly nurses calming his fears and making him smile. “The nurses were super helpful, caring and loving. They left a huge impact on me. Since the day I became cancer free and got to go home, I knew I wanted to become a nurse when I grew up,” says Anthony, 21, now a junior in the EWU School of Nursing and a recipient of the EWU Nursing Scholarship.
Everyone — from birth to end of life — will need a nurse’s help. Unfortunately, there is a nationwide critical shortage of nurses. The federal Health Resources and Services Administration recently projected a gap of close to 64,000 full-time registered nurses by 2030.
After graduating its first cohort of 40 students last spring, EWU’s School of Nursing, housed in the SIERR Building in Spokane’s University District, is now teaching four cohorts simultaneously, meaning 80 students could graduate each year with a fully accredited Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree.
Want to support students like Anthony Orozco and help ensure our region is adequately staffed with nurses? Find a scholarship or program fund at ewu.edu/give/funds. You can also make a transformational gift by naming the School of Nursing, a classroom, study area, skills lab or other space. Contact Kaarin Appel, EWU senior director of philanthropy for the College of Health Science and Public Health, at kappel@ewu.edu or (509) 220-4418.
