Shortage of clinical nurses, educators is reaching crisis proportions
By Dr. Janet D. Allan, dean of the School of Nursing
The San Antonio Express-News
recently ran a thoughtful editorial on
the shortage of nurses statewide. This
shortage is not a nursing problem —
it is a community problem. The
demand for nurses is soaring, but the
supply of nurses and nursing school
faculty is dwindling.
Causes
What is causing this? Experts point
to heightened productivity requirements
in our hospitals, the loss of
nursing positions over the last decade
during the downsizing of hospitals, the
aging of the nursing workforce (in both
practice and education), increasing use
of technology necessitating greater
levels of training, and the 30 percent
decline in nursing enrollments over the
last five years. The decline in nursing
enrollments has been attributed to
public perception of the difficulty of
clinical nursing positions and to the
growth of other opportunities for
women, who still constitute the
majority of nurses.
Texas, like the rest of the country, is
facing a shortage of registered nurses,
with hospital RN and skilled nursing
faculty vacancy rates exceeding
10 percent. This shortage is even more
acute in rural areas. Texas is short 40,000
nurses and the demand will continue to
grow. The average age of an RN working
in a clinical setting is 44 and the average
age of a nurse educator is 55. It is
estimated that 40 percent of professionals
in both groups will retire by 2010.
Education
By 2007, Texas needs to double the
number of graduates from nursing
programs that prepare students for
initial RN licensure. Those programs
include associate degree programs,
baccalaureate programs and diploma or
hospital programs. Part of the problem
is that at a time when schools of
nursing need to increase enrollments,
programs are turning away qualified
applicants primarily because of the lack
of budgeted faculty positions. In Texas
in 1999, more than 3,000 qualified
applicants were not admitted to nursing
programs because of lack of faculty and
clinical mentors. One difficulty in
attracting nurses into faculty careers is
the low salary scale.
Solutions
What is being done to address the
shortage? In the last regular session,
state legislators enacted the Nursing
Shortage Reduction Act. This legislation
will provide nursing programs with
additional resources to enroll more
students and to assure the recruitment
and retention of faculty and students.
The act also will provide more flexibility
and use of funds for financial aid
to students. In San Antonio, five
nursing programs are collaborating
with the Greater San Antonio Hospital
Council to develop a nursing shortage
initiative that would create partnerships
between educational institutions and
hospitals. Nursing schools in San
Antonio are exploring innovative ways
to develop more faculty. For example,
the UTHSC School of Nursing has
developed a nursing scholars program to
attract baccalaureate and master's
students to academic careers.
Scholarships
Students entering the UTHSC
School of Nursing are invited to ask
about scholarship opportunities. We
aggressively recruit minority students
and students from rural areas of South
Texas. I encourage interested individuals
to call the School of Nursing at
ext. 7-5800 and ask about making a
scholarship donation. The Health
Science Center receives less than half
of its operating budget from the state.
I write this op-ed piece to alert
the community to the growing
nursing shortage.
This is a community issue and will
require involvement of the community
in the solution.
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