Anna Greditor, vice president of field operations-complex care management Wisconsin for UnitedHealth Group, was the keynote speaker at Milwaukee Area Technical College’s Spring Nurse Pinning Ceremony May 9.
Sixty five nursing students attended the ceremony. The Nurse Pinning Ceremony signifies that nursing education is completed and that the graduate is eligible to join the profession. The term “pinning” comes from the placement of the school’s nursing pin on the graduate by Nancy Vrabec, dean of MATC’s School of Health Sciences. Pinning ceremonies began in the 1860s at the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London when Florence Nightingale was awarded the Red Cross of St. George after serving the injured and dying during the Crimean War.
Dr. Mohammad Dakwar, MATC provost; practical nursing graduate Lindsay Jefferson; and associate degree nursing graduate John Dondero; also spoke at the ceremony. Kathy Costa-Lieberthal, an MATC nursing instructor, will serve as mistress of ceremonies.
Greditor represents UnitedHealth group. In January, United Health Foundation awarded a $2.3 million grant to MATC to enable the college to double the size of its registered nursing program over the next three years and help address the state’s nursing shortage. The shortage of registered nurses – described by Wisconsin’s Public Policy Forum as “one of the greatest workforce challenges facing the health care industry – and employers as a whole” – affects health care services at all levels of care and is projected to increase as experienced nurses retire. The forum’s report calls for a 24 percent increase in the state’s workforce of registered nurses by 2020.