Brooks Rehabilitation (Brooks), a nonprofit organization founded in Jacksonville, has been at the forefront of physical rehabilitation care for more than 50 years. While it’s best known for the clinical and community programs it has for individuals with disabilities, Brooks offers a comprehensive system of care: providing inpatient and outpatient services along with skilled nursing services, in addition to assisted living and memory care from several locations throughout the state.
To upskill its own employees and address the growing nursing shortage in the region and throughout the state, Brooks partnered with CareerSource NEFL in 2023 – tapping into its customized training program to provide training to its employees to become licensed practical nurses (LPN).
Today, nine employees have gone through the training to become LPNs, with a second round of training under way now, and Brooks Senior Vice President of Nursing and System Chief Nursing Officer Joanne S. Hoertz said they plan to launch the third group of employees through LPN training this August – in large part thanks to the customized training funds.
Hoertz was introduced to CareerSource NEFL back in 2021 and the organization has taken part in many of its job fairs and hiring events over the years, but it was the growing nursing shortage that led Brooks to collaborate through the organization’s customized training program.
“The nursing shortage is very real and it’s not going to go away,” she said. “We’re projecting that by 2035 there will be a shortage of 59,000 nurses across the state of Florida, which will vary from county to county, but northeast Florida will be hit by that, as well.”
Brooks was facing challenges in staffing skilled nurses across its system and decided to try something “a bit more innovative and different” – which meant partnering with a local college to establish an on-site LPN training program that would upskill existing staff and provide Brooks with a pipeline of new nurses coming into the organization.
Brooks partnered with the Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) to provide training assistance for the first two cohorts that went through the new program.
“We’re fortunate that Carol was able to help us receive funding from CareerSource Northeast Florida to get the training program going,” she said. “It does cost us per employee…for the school program, for the training hours and, of course, having to adjust each employees work hours to allow them to attend classes. But that’s what it takes to make the program doable and achievable from the employee’s perspective.”
Hoertz said the biggest challenge facing those who can be upskilled, specifically employees in nursing assistant roles, is the time constraints they already face.
“Normally, they just can’t make it to a program because of their work schedules and their real life issues like paying their bills, their family responsibilities and transportation and fitting those around the hours demanded by their current jobs,” she said. “But with this innovative program, the employee doesn’t need to worry about the all those financial and time implications. We adjusted work schedules, which was quite challenging, and we supplemented work hours through training dollars that allowed them to successfully complete a very intense program – with all training taking place on the Brooks Rehabilitation campuses.”
In turn, those who go through the LPN Training provide a two-year commitment to continue working with Brooks.
Its first cohort of 11 employees started in June 2023 and graduated in August 2024, and its second group of 12 started in August 2024 and will graduate this November. Hoertz says she hopes to have a third cohort of about 12 employees begin later this summer.
“It’s a pretty extensive process for the employee to actually be selected to get into this program,” she said. “The first year we considered as a pilot program, so we changed some of the criteria the second time. We did find that by having the employee achieve a minimum score on the college’s pre-entrance exam made them much more successful in completing the course.”
Hoertz says the program may not have happened without the help it received from CareerSource NEFL.
“I do think it would have been a struggle to do this without CareerSource Northeast Florida,” she said. “In addition to the funding, they helped us design the training program and identify the budget so we can clearly show the upskilling of our existing workforce and the life changing earning capacity of the individuals going to this program. It’s an excellent use of tax dollars to get employees in our state upskilled, achieve a livable salary and start them on a new career path.”