Massachusetts Nursing Apprenticeship Network (MNAN)

Hello everyone, I'm Jay Prosser.

I'm the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability.

We're going to talk today about nursing apprenticeships, specifically in practical nursing and 
registered nursing areas.

Prior to that, though, let me just take a moment in case you're not familiar with the Nursing 
Council and the work that we do.

The Nursing Council was idealized back in 2019 as part of the Healthcare Collaborative under 
the administration of former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.

It actually came into operation in 2021 under the direction of the Executive Office of Health 
and Human Services.

We live at UMass Chan in a department of UMass Chan called For Health Consulting, which 
used to be Commonwealth Medicine and exist through an interdepartmental service 
agreement with EOHHS.

This partnership is very beneficial to us because it allows us to be somewhat of a quasi-state 
agency, and it also allows us to lean in on the resources at For Health Consulting, as well as 

UMass Chan, to accomplish some of the initiatives and projects that we undertake, which 
would be very challenging if all we had to lean on was state resources.

This is a very beneficial relationship.

The Nursing Council convenes key stakeholders in Massachusetts to focus on everything 
nursing workforce related.

When we talk about that, we're talking about practical nurses, registered nurses, advanced 
practice nurses, which can be educators, nurse practitioners, nurse scientists, nurse leaders, 
nurse midwives, the list goes on and on and on.

We also tend to focus on some of the unlicensed assisted personnel roles that support nursing, 

CNAs and things like that, because we know that when we support those well, a couple things 
happen.

First of all, it helps the work of the nurse, right?

It makes patient outcomes better, but it also creates kind of a career trajectory that if we build 
it appropriately can create nurses for the future.

Now the work of the council is vast in that we are involved in a lot of things academic wise, 
workforce initiative wise, legislative, both at the state and the federal level
that all focuses on nursing workforce.

And nurses as the largest sector of the healthcare workforce are super, super important.

So that's the work that we do.

Apprenticeships happens to be a portion of that work.

Apprenticeships are very, very important, something I'm very passionate about, but it is
a portion of a very larger focus and a lot larger body of work.

Apprenticeships are a key driver for creating the next generation of nurses.

So I want to kind of talk to you today about what we can do to help you as you look at creating 
licensed practical nurses and registered nurses apprenticeships.

So just a little bit of a history, apprenticeships are not anything new, right?

And today's just a conversation, this is not a presentation.

We're happy to meet with you personally and give presentations to your organization, talk to 
individuals in your organization, and I will give you all my contact information at the end of this 
so that you can do that.

Today's just a conversation just to let you know of the things that we are able to do.

The idea of apprenticeships is 150 years old.

But as we look at healthcare, healthcare apprenticeships have really kind of been what we call 
the last frontier in apprenticeships, especially as it relates to nursing.

However, we started seeing that really in 2020 as the pandemic began there were some 
development of nursing apprenticeships prior to that, but the pandemic accelerated the 
development of those apprenticeships in nursing.

The pandemic exacerbated some of the problems that we already had in nursing workforce 
that we weren't really addressing appropriately.

And this really kind of facilitated, or sparked rather, the kind of creation of nursing 
apprenticeships.

When the pandemic first hit I was in Alabama, and Alabama today has one of the best nursing 
apprenticeship programs in the United States of America.

It's not the only one, but it's a really, really strong program.

So I was able to be on kind of the beginning stages of that and have watched it develop over 
the years and just been very, very impressed with the work.

And something that I've always bought into, the fact that if you're in nursing school, getting 
that hands-on experience in an actual patient care setting is invaluable.

And so this is really kind of the evolution of apprenticeship.

So when I came to Massachusetts in late 2021, this is something that I was very interested in 
doing.

So when I became the executive director of the council in late, late 2023, one of the initiatives 
that we started on within the first six months was nursing apprenticeships.

So we have been working in that space for about a year and a half.

And what we did is we wanted to develop, because you can look at apprenticeships in states that offer those, and they're all a little bit different.

They all have kind of the basic same structure, and interestingly enough, they have very similar 
outcomes.

But they have to be a little bit different because states are run differently, right?

There's different regulations, different requirements.

So when we started building this idea of nursing apprenticeships, we started to craft one that 
would work in Massachusetts.

We worked with the Board of Nursing, we worked with other healthcare organizations, we 
worked with academic institutions to really craft the nursing apprenticeship program.

And we'll kind of talk through that just a little bit, but I do want to share a couple things with 
you.

So because the work of the council is vast, we wanted to create kind of something that we 
could kind of put all of the nursing apprenticeship work under, and so you will hear at some 
point what I'm going to share with you here, which is kind of an outreach, if you were, of the 
nursing council, which is the Massachusetts Nursing Apprenticeship Network.

And so this is the logo that I have displayed on the screen here.

But that's just something that you'll see, but that's kind of how we consolidate all the different 
work that we do in nursing apprenticeships.

So we started working in nursing apprenticeships and to develop something that would work 
in Massachusetts.

And with that, we created a lot of different things.

One of those was what you're looking at right here, which is really the Practical and Registered 

Nursing Apprenticeship Program.

And this is going to go really fast, so obviously we can get this to you.

So what this does is this lays out all the different kind of terms related to nursing 
apprenticeships.

It lays out all the different regulations from the Board of Nursing and what a Nurse apprentice 
can do can't do although we know that the border nursing does not regulate apprentices There 
is still some practices Regarding, you know how your nurses delegate and things like that.

It's very important.

So, you know not that anything we're going to get into in this conversation, but We laid out all 
the different things that would impact these apprentices and we talked about the difference 
between a level one apprentice a level two apprentice

And this also lays out, which you'll see, the different skills that a Practical Nurse Apprentice 1 
and a Practical Nurse Apprentice 2 can do.

It lays out the different competencies that you're going to check them off at in as the 
employer.

It helps you to craft your policies and procedures at your healthcare organization.

Regarding practical nurses, here are some of the skills they can do depending on the level of 
apprentice that they are.

And this goes also, and this is very fast, but this also goes to the registered nurse.

It talks about the various things that you're going to check them off on as far as skills go, as 
well as the various duties that they can perform.

So this is a very valuable tool.

So what can we do for you as the nursing council?

Well, we have a vision to be able to coordinate ideally all the nursing apprenticeships in the 
state under the Massachusetts Nursing Apprenticeship Network for several reasons.

Number one, so that we can do a better job in tracking data, that we can keep up with these 
nurse apprentices and really be able to keep our finger on how well we're doing in producing 
apprentices and how effective the Massachusetts Nursing Apprenticeship Program is.
It also helps to create some consistency in the programs.

Now, we know that an apprenticeship is an employer-based program, right?

And you have to do it obviously in cooperation with an academic institution.

However, it's employer-based.

So in the creation of the Nursing Apprenticeship Program in Massachusetts, we didn't touch 
nursing education because we know that nursing education is very structured, it's very 
rigorous, and so we didn't change nursing education, but we added the element of an 
apprenticeship.

So as you look in your organization, your healthcare organization, and starting an 
apprenticeship, we want to help do the work for you.

Now, because we are a state agency, this is our service to you, right?

We're not charging a fee for anything.

This is our service to you.

We want to say, Hey, take our stuff, use our stuff, because what we can do is we can save you a 
year and a half worth of planning time.

We can help guide your policies.

We can answer crucial questions for you.

We have formed a really strong network of apprenticeship partnerships across the United 

States that we can let you in on.

We want you to be a partner with us.

And so this just helps us to help you because we want to see these students in 
apprenticeships, getting their nursing education, having the opportunity to go to nursing 
school.

That is the win for us.

And so if you're wanting to do that, then we can help you.

So what we can do for you is we can help structure your program from the competency side, 
we can help advise how your policies and procedures in your organization would have to talk 
about nurse apprentices and roles and things like that.

So you can use all of our resources.
We'll kind of help you walk through the process.

You'll see in the future that we'll be doing some webinars from the academic side as well as 
the employer side of what to be thinking about, how you actually take an apprenticeship from 
a good idea into actual operationalize that apprenticeship.

So as we reach out to help you, we can also register your apprenticeship with the Division of 

Apprenticeship Standards, who's a fantastic partner for us.

We already have the work process schedule ready.

We'll just add in...some of the educational hours, the 150 hours of related technical instruction 
that can either be in the classroom or it can be classroom that you do in the healthcare 
organization as well.

And that becomes your work process schedule.

So we'll actually be the intermediary for you and the Division of Apprenticeship Standards.

We'll take care of all your agreements.

We'll take care of all your paperwork.

We'll take care of all the reporting.

All you have to do is just provide us the information.

You can take all of our competencies, which are nationally based.

They're not anything we invented.

They're actually the National Council of the State Boards of Nursing's plan for the NCLEX, 
which is the examination that both PN and RN students take when they complete the 
programs.

It's based on their competencies, so it's actually word for word.

So take those competencies, use them to structure your apprentices.

We can advise you on how to do that.

We can be kind of an idea bank for you.

We have the information on scope of practice that you can utilize to advise your policies in 
your healthcare organizations, which you'll have to have those.

We will register your apprenticeship with DAS for you.

We'll do all the reporting for you.

All you have to do, again, is just give us information, which can be an e-mail, but we'll work out 
a system with you, whatever's most convenient for you to do to report to us any information 
that we may need.

Obviously, whenever we're reporting data out from a statewide perspective,

We will keep all things confidential.

We won't report out people as you would expect.

So what do you get for registering an apprenticeship?

We encourage doing registered apprenticeships.

Now, you can invent your own program if you'd like to, and that's fine as well.

We would be happy to help you.

We'd be happy to give you anything that we have because we have the program, we have 
recommendations, we have apprenticeship talking points, we have briefs, just a number of 
resources that you'll be able to find on our website or that we can send to you directly that 
you can learn more about apprenticeships.

But the benefit of having a registered apprenticeship is always kind of like this.

It's kind of like the credential that you get because it's a stamp of approval on your work.

It also opens you up to the apprenticeship tax credit, which at the recording of this video, 
which is late December of 2025, the tax credit is $4,800, around $4,800 per apprentice per 
year up to a maximum of $100,000 per year.

If you pay any type of taxes, that tax credit works for you.

So that's definitely a big thing, especially as you look on the return on investment because as 
an employer you are up fronting the money on those individuals.

We have some advice on return on investment to kind of show you financially how this works 
for you.

But you can get the tax credit.

Obviously DES is really good about reporting out funding opportunities.

So it kind of creates a network so you can get real information.

What we want to do with the Massachusetts Nursing Apprenticeship Network is also get all 
these apprenticeships connected.
so that we can report out grants, funding opportunities, and things like that to you.

Additionally, what the council is going to do, we have our practical nursing and registered 
nursing apprenticeships ready to launch.

However, we're going to continue to work in this space because we know that there are still 
very challenging positions to recruit for, especially like in the emergency department, in the 
intensive care units.

So one of the goals that we have is to take these apprenticeships and really develop those to 
be critical care apprenticeships that still accomplish all the things that the student would need 
from a clinical perspective for the academic institution and create emergency department 
apprenticeships.

And so the advantage to use an employer if you're hiring in these areas is you get more 
practice ready nurses.

They have higher retention rates.
and you're starting their training well before they graduate.

So it's just a fantastic opportunity there.

There has been a lot of interest, I'll tell you this, in OR apprenticeships because we know that 
the training post-graduation for any nurse in the OR is around a year, if not more,
a new kind of an additional time period that that nurse is really in non-productive state 
because they are learning to be an OR nurse.

So there's a lot of opportunities that we'll continue to work with, so we're going to continue 
to, you know, kind of develop these nursing apprenticeships.

And so long term, you could just have a, you know, standard RN model, standard practical nursing model, but then you could have a RN-ED, RN-ICU, perhaps RN-OR.

There's a lot of work to do and a lot of questions to answer.

That's some of the work that we'll continue to do and obviously as part of the network you'll 
have first option to all that.

That's just a little brief and I know obviously as an employer you've got a lot of things to do so 
we just want to kind of talk to you for a minute just to let you know that the Nursing Council 
especially our nursing apprenticeship network is here to help you.

We're here to work with you.

All you have to do is just reach out to us.

Let us know that you need help.

We'll be glad to talk to you.

We can always do virtual meetings anytime.

We'll be glad to come on site if you'd like for us to.

And we can just have some conversations.

Happy to give a formal presentation if that's beneficial.

And just talking about how we structure nurse apprenticeships, the advantages, and we can 
send you all types of material.

I do want to share one last thing, which is my e-mail address.

And I will kind of throw this up here.
Jay.prosser@umassmed.edu

But if you have questions about apprenticeships, just e-mail me at 
jay.prosser@umassmed.edu, and I'll be happy to connect you with the appropriate resources 
and let you know how the NCWS can work with you as an intermediary with DAS to register all 
the apprenticeships for you and do all the heavy lift of the administrative side for you.

But more than that, how we can help you as you look to create these registered 
apprenticeships for practical nurses and registered nurses.

This is our job.

This is what we're passionate about, as well as all the other 50,000 things we have going on.

This is really something that drives us and we're so happy to be able to have the opportunity.

So I encourage you to reach out to us, let us know what we can do to help you.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you so we can have the 
opportunity to talk more about nursing apprenticeships.

So thank you very much.