MINNEAPOLIS — A certified nursing assistant school designed to combat the shortage in health care workers is celebrating a major milestone Friday. WCCO introduced you to Latasha Lee last December , as she was looking for students for her school. Now, she's graduating her first students from Healthy Helpful Insight Healthcare Institute.
For Lee, this is the day she has been dreaming about. The first graduating class of the school she founded. These 16 students went through a six-week course teaching them basic skill care for patients.
"The first five weeks is just in the classroom, in the skills lab, and then on week five I take the students to a long-term care facility," said Lee. Now they enter the workforce to help combat the growing need for health care workers. "Currently there is a shortage of 23,000 caregivers and that's CNAs, PCAs, home health care aides.
So my wish is to try to help combat that deficit. And each year that number grows," said Lee. Lee also wants to increase diversity in the workforce .
"This school is special. Have you ever known a school that provides you excellent training and guaranteed employment when you are finished?" said graduate Neely. "We have three employers that are part of the collaborative that I am involved in and they interview the students on the first day of class.
The students decide which employer they want to go with and then on week five the employers come back to interview and then after they take their certification exams they.