SUFFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — The area's largest medical group is teaming up with a growing community college to fill needed healthcare jobs, and students who are a part of the program are thankful for the help. The Virginia Department of Health and the state of Virginia partnered to create the Earn to Learn grant, which pays up to $500,000 to state colleges in underserved areas, and Sentara Health is partnering with Paul D. Camp Community College to take on those who receive the grant to give them the real-world experience they need at Suffolk's Sentara Obici Hospital. They're hoping the grant gives people a strong incentive to choose a degree in the medical field, with a nursing shortage that has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Nineteen students at Paul D. Camp Community College are benefiting from the new state grant, with pay comparable to what a certified nursing assistant would get. Students told 10 On Your Side that it's a game-changer. For student Miranda McCabe, it started at age 11, watching her grandfather suffer through an aggressive type of cancer."Watching the hospice nurse and all the hospital faculty kind of go in and take care of him and my family, that really touched me as a young person,” McCabe said.And Juhan Carr was in engineering when he decided to flip majors."My grandmother passed away awhile back," Carr said, "so, when that happened, before that, she had always told me she wanted me to be a nurse, or just to help people out. So it's what I set out to do." Camp Community College Dean of Nursing and Allied Health Dr. Angela Sheaffer said she knows the struggle all too well. "I remember running clinical during the pandemic and being one of those nurses to sit at the bedside of a patient who was dying, cause we couldn’t have their families come in," Sheaffer said. "So that, in-and-of-itself, put an emotional and mental toll on nurses. And nurses basically said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.'" She believes this grant will give the field a cushion and help fill the gaps. "So that hospitals don't have to have nurses work four and five days a week, they can work that three 12-hour shifts or four 12-hour shifts ... and have a better work-life balance,” Sheaffer said.The money allowed McCabe to cut back from her second full-time job to just part-time."It's really nice when we can get a little bit of money here-and-there for going and helping people because that takes a little stress off of us,” McCabe said. And she can't wait to make a difference."I've been able to be there, cry with the families, pray with the families, be with the patients themselves," McCabe said.And Carr said he’s found his passion in the emergency room."It's fast-paced, and I'm seeing a lot of people and helping a lot of people at the same time,” Carr said. They said they used to work full-time night shifts and would go into class with little sleep. Now they're able to focus more on making a difference. That's the type of thing both Camp Community College and Sentara Health officials want to hear, coming on the heels of the school's expansion of its nursing and allied health offerings with a new Franklin facility, as the Sentara Foundation gave $450,000 toward renovating the former Tidewater News building. The school has expanded its nursing and allied health offerings with the 2023 purchase of a new facility — with help from the Obici Healthcare Foundation and the Hampton Roads Community Foundation — as the Sentara Foundation gave $450,000 toward renovating the building in August. The building will serve as the home of the school's Nursing and Allied Health Professions Center, with the first phase of work set to be completed by the end of the year and classes kicking off in early January.