Creighton University, situated in Omaha, Nebraska, is on the brink of expanding its reach in Phoenix, with eyes on enlarging its presence at the burgeoning Park Central campus. According to a recent report by ABC15, the university has recently completed its 200,000-square-foot health sciences building, while ensconced in ambitious growth plans that could potentially sprawl onto a neighboring 2.5-acre lot, as was stated by Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, Creighton's president.
The current building, known as the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust Health Sciences Building, is now close to reaching its 1,000-student capacity with 850 enrollees. "We've almost grown into all of our enrollment projections," Hendrickson noted, "Next year we'll be at capacity," he added, whilst hinting at the need to scale the educational infrastructure, to meet the burgeoning healthcare professional deficit in the metro area. However, an exact timetable for the expansion remains to be set.
Addressing the dire shortage of health professionals, Hendrickson cited a stark projection by the Cicero Institute — by 2030, the Phoenix metro is on course to be short of 80,000 nurses, and Arizona could lack over 8,000 doctors, as was detailed by Phoenix Business Journal. This particular shortfall plays into Creighton's plans, as they gear up to accommodate the growing demand for medical and health professionals in the state.
The Park Central campus, markedly the college's first building in Phoenix completed back in 2021, was designed to foster interprofessional collaboration across multiple health disciplines. "It's more affordable, more efficient and you have more specialists around the table and more personal to the needs of the patient," Hendrickson expounded. The facility, now cherishing the recently unlocked sixth floor, promotes a convergence of its College of Nursing, School of Medicine, and School of Pharmacy and Health Professions — a unison that has been shown to be effective in emergency medicine studies.
Ranking among the largest Phoenix-area colleges and universities in terms of on-campus enrollment, Creighton's upward trajectory in accommodating and training healthcare professionals is a response not just to its own growth predictions but also to the critical healthcare gaps looming large over Arizona's horizon. As the community braces for a potential healthcare provision crisis, institutions like Creighton University are at the forefront, within the walls of education, to attempt to stem the impending tide of professional shortages.
