U.Va. Health launched its Earn While You Learn program four years ago and since then, the initiative has grown to span a broad range of healthcare training programs. Sixteen employees graduated this spring as the inaugural cohort for the program’s nursing track.
EWYL offers current and new University Medical Center employees the opportunity to work part-time and receive full salary and benefits, while also attending school full time, according to the U.Va. Health media briefing July 31. Participants commit to work at U.Va. Health once they graduate from the program, and EWYL has opportunities for both entry-level and advanced candidates.
Entry-level programs do not require education or experience beyond a high school diploma, and candidates are hired by the University Medical Center to work 36-40 hours per week while they receive an education on one of the entry-level tracks — emergency medical technician, phlebotomy and more. Advanced programs are open to Medical Center employees who have worked in their job for at least one year and are in good standing. A few of the offered advanced tracks include registered nurse, surgical technologist and radiological technologist.
“These [entry-level programs] are for community members who have no healthcare experience whatsoever, but are interested in getting into healthcare,” Program Manager Nicole Henley said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily. “The advanced programs are longer in duration, and they're designed as a career path for our current employees.”
Program lengths vary anywhere from six weeks to multiple years depending on a participant’s track, and following completion of their education, entry-level graduates commit to one year of employment within the Health System. Advanced graduates commit to one year of employment for every year they trained, which is two years for nursing, Program Director Beth Mehring said.
Mehring explained that U.Va. Health created the program in response to a shortage of qualified applicants for healthcare jobs. The shortage predated the COVID-19 pandemic but worsened in the ensuing years, she added.
“We were finding that there were simply not qualified people applying for jobs at the Medical Center,” Mehring said. “[We] give lots of credit to our executive leadership who said let’s do something different. Let’s see if we can develop a program that will train people.”
U.Va. Health’s program is one of several similar training initiatives that started in the Commonwealth in response to a shortage of qualified health care workers. The American Hospital Association spotlighted similar post-pandemic healthcare workforce efforts at Germanna Community College and Mary Washington Healthcare, according to the Virginia Department of Health.
The University’s program started with entry-level tracks for candidates with no healthcare background in 2022. In 2023 and 2024, advanced tracks were added for U.Va. Health employees pursuing licensed roles, according to Henley.
According to Mehring, U.Va. Health partners with outside academic institutions — primarily community colleges such as Piedmont Virginia Community College — to deliver this training.
Mehring also explained how the University Health System plays a role in the partnerships with other colleges — EWYL coordinates employees’ training and pays for remaining costs and balances after grants and tuition assistance. This leaves the teaching and instruction of the majority of EWYL programs to its academic partners rather than directly delivering it to students.
"We're not primary educators," Mehring said. "We are facilitating the education for employees that we hire."
According to Henley, the collaborative model of EWYL exists because most people cannot finish a nursing degree while working and studying full-time at once. Citing Virginia Community College Systems data in the U.Va. Health media briefing, only 20 percent of students who work full time while attending school full time in a degree program receive their degree.
The EWYL Nursing Program launched in 2024 to address that struggle for nursing participants specifically — nursing participants who may otherwise take up to eight years to finish a degree while working full time can instead complete it in two years, Henley said.
“We need 100 percent of the nurses that start nursing school to finish nursing school, not 20 percent,” Henley said. “[With the program], we get nurses at the two-year mark instead of the eight-year mark, and are able to support our patients and community in a better way.”
Tuition is covered for program participants by a combination of three sources, according to Mehring — financial aid students apply for on their own, the University's existing tuition-assistance benefit available to all employees and EWYL funds covering whatever balance remains.
“The biggest thing that we do is help ensure the labor support for some of [particpants’] hours,” Mehring said. “It varies between different programs, and they can maintain their full time benefits. So, if you can imagine having a family and you're the primary person providing insurance, that's a really big deal to be able to sustain that while you're in school.”
As of July 2025, according to a CBS19 article, more than 710 people have enrolled in EWYL since 2022, with about 80 percent completing their training.
Ashlyn Hughes, one of the first nursing graduates, spent 15 years at the University Health System. According to the U.Va. Health media briefing, she worked as a patient care assistant and at Continuum Home Health, before finishing her nursing degree through EWYL. Hughes said she joined the program once she found out it would let her keep her full salary and benefits while she finished the degree.
Hughes passed her licensing exam — the National Council Licensure Examination required to be a licensed registered nurse in the U.S. and Canada — this summer. She will begin work as a registered nurse in the main operating room at U.Va. Health Aug. 17, according to the briefing.
“Anyone who's been through an NCLEX exam will tell you, when you leave, you don't know what to feel. Your emotions are all over the place," Hughes said in the media briefing. "I cried, I called everybody. I'm so excited to finally be able to say, I've done this. I am done."
Although both Mehring and Henley expressed excitement for the future of the recently graduated cohort, they also recognized that one cohort of 16 does not substantially increase the number of U.Va. Health nurses, which is currently around 2,000, Henley said. Mehring added that the Health System runs several other workforce initiatives at once — including an internal and external traveler nurse conversion program — making it difficult to credit EWYL specifically for any change in U.Va Health’s nurse staffing levels.
“I don’t know [whether] EWYL has been the primary influencer of the current nursing state, because we just graduated our first class,” Mehring said.
Outside of nursing and other advanced tracks, Mehring also pointed to the significance of the entry-level pathways in the program, which train people directly into roles like patient care technician. These are jobs that, unlike nursing, do not require an outside degree or licensing exam, but still directly support patient care. Without enough hands-on help in a unit, that basic care falls to the nurses instead, pulling them away from the more specialized work that they are trained to provide.
“If we don’t have enough patient care technicians on a given unit, that means the nurse is doing everything for the patient,” Mehring said. “And that means that the nurse can’t work to the top of their license.”
According to both Mehring and Henley, the goal for EWYL is to have fewer open positions filled by outside staffing agencies.
Henley agreed, adding that filling those positions internally means faster, more effective care.
“Ultimately, when we have our positions filled, the patients can get the best and quickest care that they need,” Henley said.
Vrinda Vashist is a staff writer on the news desk. She is a second-year student in the College.
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