CLEVELAND, Wis. — The ability to practice skills over and over — and learn from mistakes — at Lakeshore College has given Amber Madden additional confidence in her career as a nurse.
“We get this comfortable environment so we’re not afraid to say, ‘Hey, I did made a mistake, this is how I would correct it,’” she said. “Then you know in the back of your mind, when you get there out in the real world, if you do make a mistake, you already know the plan to correct it.”
Madden, a licensed practical nurse, is eight months away from finishing her associate nursing degree.
“We need more nurses out there, we need more medical assistants, all that. The health care industry needs us,” she said. “They need good caring workers, and I feel Lakeshore really instill that upon us.”
The college celebrated the completion of the new 26,000-square-foot Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Center for Health Care Excellence Friday.
It doubles the college’s ability to annually train 1,500 students for careers in health care and emergency medical services and comes at a time when clinics and hospitals on the lakeshore and around Wisconsin are looking for trained health care professionals.
It’s a need area providers have expressed to college president Paul Carlsen.
“This allows us to scale to meet a massive need in our community for health care workers,” he said.
It was completed with $3 million from the Lakeshore College Foundation and the help of other community donors. Froedtert Health and Franciscan Sisters Of Christian Charity contributed $1 million to the project.
“We hear first and foremost that our community continues to need us to graduate top-notch health care workers, which we do," Carlsen said.
Carlsen believes health care workers are needed.
Madden lives in Manitowoc where she grew up. She sees the need in the community for more care providers.
“The opportunities are endless. They really are,” Madden said. “It used to be the you had to work a certain unit before you could get into a specialty unit. You’re not finding that any more. If you want to go to a certain unit, you will have that opportunity. We are very low in health care workers just in general and people are willing to train you.”