Construction is underway in Anderson on a 30,000-square-foot facility that AnMed says is designed to help address the ongoing nursing shortage across the Carolinas and Georgia. The AnMed Education and Innovation Center will sit at 610 North Street near East Greenville Street, positioned beside AnMed Medical Center, and will dedicate its entire first floor to Tri-County Technical College's Associate Degree in Nursing program.
According to FOX Carolina News, the two-story center will include classrooms, a computer lab, simulation debriefing and review rooms, and two comprehensive simulation patient rooms equipped with medical headwalls. Those simulation spaces are meant to support training across critical care, labor and delivery, emergency care, medical-surgical care, and behavioral health, officials said. The building will also house collaborative workspaces, administrative offices, and clinical classrooms, expanding local health care training opportunities and giving Tri-County Technical College room to grow its nursing program.
A Pipeline Meant to Keep Students Local
Officials said students training at the new center will have access to paid part-time employment and direct mentorship from experienced AnMed clinicians. Shaunda Trotter, AnMed Health's vice president of nursing and chief nursing officer, said the partnership will build the future of nursing from within the community. Connecting students with caregivers and easing their path into practice, she said, will create a stronger, more sustainable workforce, per the station's report.
That mentorship model echoes AnMed's existing Nurse Scholar Program, which already helps Tri-County Technical College students earn their nursing degree while gaining paid work experience at AnMed, according to AnMed. That program provides advanced tuition funding plus a $5,000 bonus for additional expenses, and participants commit to a 24-month course of study while working at least eight hours a week as nursing assistants. After graduating and passing South Carolina's licensing exam, scholars must then work at AnMed for 24 consecutive months as registered nurses.
AnMed and Tri-County Technical College have also built a separate Patient Care Technician program, grant-funded and run with community partners, intended to train more nursing assistants and open a path toward nursing careers, as reported by scbiznews.com. Students in that program attend classroom training at Tri-County Technical College and clinical training at AnMed Health, and current AnMed nursing assistants are eligible to attend the classes.
Enrollment Figures and an Unresolved Scale Question
Per officials, Tri-County Technical College currently admits 120 nursing students per academic year and maintains a waiting list for its nursing program, with total nursing enrollment reaching 220 students across all sites. Sources differ on how large the new AnMed partnership's enrollment boost will ultimately be: FOX Carolina News reported the partnership will add 100 nursing students over the next five years, while the Anderson Observer reported the goal is to increase nursing enrollment by 100 students a year over that same five-year span. AnMed's role, according to the Observer, includes helping provide some of the resources that make that expansion possible.
Officials pointed to a steep regional need behind the buildout: South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia are among the states facing the largest nursing shortfalls, and South Carolina has had more than 2,000 nursing positions advertised in recent months, per officials cited by FOX Carolina News. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses has projected the national nursing deficit will exceed 63,000 by 2030, officials said.
A Statewide Gap That Numbers Keep Confirming
Separate data back up the urgency officials describe locally. As of 2024, South Carolina had only 72% of the nurses it needed statewide, and that figure is projected to reach just 80% adequacy by 2035 without significantly expanded workforce efforts, according to Spectrum News. The same outlet reported that USC, Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina have launched an expanded nursing faculty pipeline, funded by the BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation, with nine doctoral nursing students currently participating across the three schools. USC hopes that program will ultimately help produce about 300 additional nurses by 2030.
AnMed has built out other education partnerships as part of the same broader push. The health system founded Med Ed Academy with the Anderson I & II Career and Technology Center to introduce high school students to health care careers, and its partnership with Anderson University already provides clinical rotations that AnMed says gave nursing students valuable experience, according to AnMed's own account of its partnerships.
The shortage extends beyond South Carolina's borders. The nursing shortage is being felt across the country, including in North Carolina, where Cape Fear Community College has leaned on realistic patient simulations, including dozens of mannequins, to prepare Associate Degree Nursing students, according to WWAY News. Students there practice communicating with the mannequins, checking blood pressure, and identifying physical signs such as scars, and the college hopes to expand simulation training into other health fields, including dental hygiene. Officials in Anderson say those interested in the Tri-County Technical College nursing program can learn more at tctc.edu/nursing.
