TESTIMONY IN REGARD TO S.B. 792 and S.B. 793

Good morning. My name is Marylee Pakieser and I am currently in my 28th year of providing quality health care as a registered nurse in Michigan.

I am also the President of the Michigan Nurses Association (MNA), and in that role, as well as in my personal life I have encouraged and promoted the need to support our nursing students. At MNA, we have spent hundreds of hours sharing and talking with students and faculty, whether they were located in the UP or downtown Detroit. We have re-built our ties with the Michigan Nursing Students Association Board of Directors. Our nursing students are a valued treasure and we are always seeking new ways to help not only them, but also the students who are yet to come into the nursing programs.

So you can imagine how pleased we were to see new legislation promoting nursing scholarships. However, in having read over the bills, there are some concerns that we feel should be noted.

Funding

We’re confused about the use of the Tobacco Settlement Money for these scholarships. Wasn’t the Tobacco Settlement Money to be used for public health support specifically in regard to smoking cessation teaching? While it’s true that using the money for nursing scholarships is in the general health arena, we’re concerned that the money is not being put to use in the intended areas, especially in light of the financial issues that are hurting our communities and their public health systems.

Payback Method

We also have concerns about the practicality of the 5-year payback method. We are heavily promoting nursing throughout our junior high schools and high schools as a first choice career. To promote that, however, we must realize that 18-25 year old students are also going to be making other life choices such as getting married, starting families and going back to school for higher degrees. A 5-year commitment to paying back money at a full-time level seems inappropriate as a recruiting tool.

Scholarship vs. Loan

To take that one step further – a student receives the scholarship, but then must leave the state as her husband has been transferred. Now the scholarship becomes a loan because, according to the contract, she’s breached the arrangement by leaving Michigan. She must pay back the loan, based on full-time wages, even if she’s not working full time. Since $3,000 is a drop in the bucket for completing nursing school, our student no doubt has plenty of other loans (scholarships or not) that she must also repay. It does not seem that this scholarship/loan arrangement is very user-friendly at a time when it’s already hard enough to interest qualified students into nursing.

It’s also been noted by those that have looked over these bills that incentives for minorities or men, both significantly lacking in nursing, are not a part of this program, nor are educational tracks for LPN, MSN or PhD mentioned.

We applaud those who believe that providing educational support for nursing students is a worthy cause. Much work and research has gone into these bills and we would not want that work to go unnoticed and unfulfilled. As we all want these scholarships to be practical as well as noble, we ask that you thoughtfully reconsider some of the aspects of this program before it becomes law. That way our students, whom you’ve heard today, will be assured of financial assistance that will aid them in their nursing education.

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