UA-Fort Smith receives $50,000 for nurse courses

FORT SMITH - The University of Arkansas at Fort Smith received $50,000 from the Arkansas attorney general’s office Thursday that it will use to purchase equipment for the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program.

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel presented the check to university Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Ray Wallace and College of Heath Sciences Dean Carolyn Mosley during a brief ceremony in the Smith-Pendergraft Campus Center at the university. State Sen. Gary Stubblefield, R-Branch, also was on hand for the check presentation.

The money came from $1,557,495 Arkansas received as its share of a court settlement last year with pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline for its illegal marketing and sales of the diabetes drug Avandia, McDaniel said.

“We got a good chunk of money from that case, and we are trying to distribute it in ways that are consistent with the underlying health-related litigation,” McDaniel said. “And it seemed to me that there was no better place to distribute some of those funds than right here at UA Fort Smith.”

The $50,000 will be used to purchase equipment for the simulation lab for the nursing program, according to a statement from university Chancellor Paul Beran.

Wallace said the $50,000, combined with other recent gifts to the university, adds to the laboratory training for nursing students and will provide an overall effect of helping alleviate the nursing shortage in the region.

Mosley said health care and health-care access havebecome buzz words in the media but absent from that discussion is the fact that nurses will be providing much of that care.

And even though there are 3.2 million nurses nationally, Fort Smith, Arkansas and the nation are experiencing nursing shortages, she said. The university has increased enrollment of students in the nursing program in response to the shortage.

“This check will enable us to buy needed equipment that will facilitate our continued production of quality nurses and that translates into quality health care for our community,” she said.

UA Fort Smith currently has 650 majors in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program as of this fall. The university first offered the Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree in 2003.