ORLANDO, Fla. – As Florida faces a critical shortage of nurses, UCF leaders broke ground last week on a $68 million nursing facility that will lead to more nurses entering the workforce.
The 90,000-square-foot Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion will add to UCF’s footprint in Lake Nona’s growing Medical City. News 6 asked College of Nursing Dean Mary Lou Sole why this location is so significant.
“Lake Nona is known for health and innovation,” she said. “We’re in close proximity to the College of Medicine, so we’ll be able to do much more interprofessional education and interprofessional research. All of those things make it an exciting location.”
The new building was made possible by a combination of public and private dollars, including nearly $44 million from the state.
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“This has been a quick 18-month journey,” Sole said. “We got our funds from the state in the fiscal year ‘23. Since that time, we did an aggressive fundraising campaign, and we’re so excited that our community stepped up to help us match the state funding to get us into this space.”
While the new high-tech space has been a priority for UCF for years, it comes at a time when Florida is facing a critical shortage of nurses.
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Florida is projected to have a shortage of more than 37,000 registered nurses (RNs) by 2035. To avoid that, an additional 2,300 RNs are needed to enter the workforce every year, and UCF President Dr. Alexander Cartwright says its new building will play a crucial role in hitting that mark.
“This region is growing so rapidly,” he said. “If we’re not proactive about really producing the talent that’s needed to actually provide the workforce, we’re going to end up just having more of a deficit. We have to produce more, but we have to keep them locally.”
“What’s really great about our student body is that 85% of them stay in Florida upon graduation and 60% stay right here in Central Florida,” Sole added. “We really are helping to fuel the future of nursing and healthcare by increasing enrollment.”
When the state-of-the-art facility opens for the 2025 fall semester, UCF predicts an additional 150 nurses will graduate each year on top of the roughly 260 it averages now, and Sole says they’ll be even more prepared when they enter the workforce.
“We’re increasing our simulation space three-fold, which will allow us to have really creative, innovative simulation to teach that next generation,” she said. “You have to have those critical thinking and other skills, and simulation is the way to go.”
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