LANSING – A new round of MI Opportunity Partnership grants will help train nurses and other critical care staff at an accelerated rate.

The $9 million in grants will help cut medical training by six months to a year, train new faculty and support special areas of need, such as respiratory care. The money will also allow universities and hospitals to update equipment.

Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor received a grant of $650,000 to improve radiology equipment and create special training tracks, which include MRI, CT scans, ultrasound and mammography.

“Some students had to go to Milwaukee to get training. Now we will be able to get that here,” said Bob Harrison, executive dean of programs at Lake Michigan. “The specialty tracks will be rotated every year so we won’t saturate the market.”

Ferris State University received two grants.

Its first grant is $188,000 for creating 18 new clinical faculty positions.

“Registered nurses would do a mini-internship by teaching them evaluation and teaching skills,” said Ellen Haneline, interim dean of the College of Allied Sciences at Ferris.

The second, of $172,000, will create an accelerated program for an associate’s degree in respiratory care.  Degree-holders help maintain ventilators, provide neonatal care and help asthma sufferers. Their training will be shortened from 2 1/2 years to 2 years.

The program will take place at Ferris’ extension campus in Grand Rapids, said Haneline.

Three Detroit-area institutions each received grants of $1 million or more, including Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Oakland University and Wayne State University. The biggest single award went to Mott Community College in Flint of $1.2 million.

“We looked at areas that had chronic needs,” said Jeanette Klemczak, chief nurse executive for Michigan’s Department of Community Health, “Flint’s economy and auto job losses have caused great needs for uninsured in the Flint area and also the Detroit Medical Center clinics.”

Klemczak said there is a need to retain nurses in inner-city areas, and that’s why those institutions received high amounts funding.

Vicki Enright, director of field services at the Department of Labor and Economic Growth, said the state needs to increase training for nurses while keeping the level of care the same.

According to Klemczak, the need for new RNs is expected to grow to 7,000 by 2010 and 18,000 by 2015.

Not all applicants got funding, for example, Ferris’ nuclear medicine department didn’t get a grant of $500,000 to accelerate its nuclear medicine technologist training. The program currently has a three-year waiting list, and is the only such university program in the state.

Theresa Raglin, department head of dental hygiene and medical imaging at Ferris State, “This is our first time applying, and we will apply again in 2009.”

Wayne State University was also denied a grant for a program that would allow nurses with an associate’s degree to get an accelerated masters degree.

The other grant beneficiaries were: Eastern Michigan University, $109,000; Grand Valley State University, $603,200; Michigan State University, $650,000; Montcalm Community College in Sidney, $641,000; Saginaw Valley State University, $294,000.