Hospitals are going
to need a lot more nurses in coming years as 79 million
baby
boomers
grow old. About 10 percent
of the nation’s nursing positions already are vacant.
But there is good news and bad news in the latest version
of America’s chronic nursing shortage.
The good news is that interest in nursing appears to
be climbing. The bad news is that nursing schools are
struggling to train a wave of new nurses because of
a shortage of faculty.
The American Associa-tion of Colleges
of Nurses (AACN) says that enrollment in baccalaureate
degree nursing
programs rose 16 percent last year to 147,170. Jeannette
Lancaster, dean of the University of Virginia’s
School of Nursing and president-elect of AACN, says that
one reason for the rising number of prospective nurses
is a changing attitude toward careers since 9/11. “We
are seeing people who have looked at their lives and
decided they want to make a difference,” she
says.
The renewed interest will need to keep
growing to meet expected demand. AACN says the U.S. will
need 1.1 million
new nurses by 2012. The problem is that nursing schools
cannot accommodate all the people who want to be nurses.
Nearly, 33,000 qualified applicants were turned away
last year, says the AACN, primarily because nursing
schools lacked the capacity to train them. In Virginia,
U.Va.’s
nursing school was able to accept only 17 percent of
its 327 first-year applicants.
The reason most schools give for their lack of capacity
is a shortage of nursing faculty. Enrollment in graduate
programs in nursing has lagged, leaving a small pool
to replace an aging teacher work force.
Pay is one of the reasons that fewer
people are becoming nursing professors. A nursing faculty
member with a
master’s
degree, for example, receives an average pay of $60,831,
according to the AACN, while a nurse practitioner in
private practice with the same degree can earn an average
of more than $94,000.
Lancaster’s school is more fortunate
than many. Its faculty is growing (eight new members
since 2004),
and plans have been announced to build a second building
that will allow the school to expand its enrollment
from 550 to 650 students by 2008.
Lancaster is trying to encourage more students to consider
careers in teaching, pointing out that the advantages
of the academic lifestyle might offset the higher pay
offered by other employers.
AACN also is touting programs that accelerate the process
leading to graduate degrees. In addition, some health
systems are helping nursing schools by paying faculty
salaries or sharing nursing staff to serve as teachers.
Lancaster believes that, with the increasing
attention that nursing has gotten, schools will find
a way to
produce the nurses that the country needs. “We have a history
of being very creative,” she says.
