Nursing School Approved

El Paso’s on the path to having another full-fledged nursing school.

The vote came down Thursday evening.

This means that El Paso’s Texas Tech current satellite nursing school will become a fully-accredited campus, similar to what happened with the Texas Tech Paul L. Foster school of medicine.

“It makes sense as part of our strategic plan long term to go ahead and open a school of nursing there with it,”said Dr. Tedd Mitchell in a phone interview just moments after the Texas Tech Board of Regents unanimously approved to move forward with an independent school of medicine.

Dr. Mitchell said with El Paso County’s designation by the federal government as a “medically under served” region with a shortage of health professionals, something had to be done.

He explained said that while there are other nursing schools schools, including UTEP and E-P-C-C, the need is very great for trained nurses. “We’ve got over 90 nursing schools in the state of Texas Texas, and in spite of that we’re not satisfying the needs. So this is one of the on going ongoing things that is a critical need, not just again the region, but for the state and the nation.” he said.

Mitchell said the chancellor’s goal is to have El Paso’s nursing school with serve 500 students by 2015.

But he cautioned that approval is just the first step in a long road, funding is just one of the many hurdles they’ll need to overcome.