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Nursing Shortage by Nurse Keith

Reporter and blogger Shaun Mullen has posted on his blog Kiko's House a missive about a new study by the New Jersey-based Collaborative Center for Nursing (NJCCN) which outlines the crisis in that state vis-a-vis the astronomical shortage of nurses and nurse educators. The study, available in pdf format, offers its assessments and recommendations for the Garden State to prevent a healthcare catastrophe. If you live elsewhere, don't gloat---this study is certainly a bellwether for the rest of the country and should offer no comfort to healthcare professionals or the general public.

For those who give little thought to the state of American healthcare, remind them of this: one of their friends or loved ones (or even they themselves!) will eventually wind up in a hospital, and the quality (and ultimate success) of their care depends to a large extent on the quality, quantity, and availability of well-trained nurses to facilitate that care.

Mullen points out that the average age of a Garden State nurse is 52, and more than 50 percent of the nurses interviewed for the study said that there were too few nurses and staff to adequately perform their job.

The CCN report states in its preface:

"Nurses are the health care providers patients are most likely to encounter during some of their most vulnerable moments—in emergency rooms, hospitals, nursing homes, clinics/physicians' offices, or in their own homes. Over time, cycles of shortages and abundances have plagued the nursing profession, with the last one occurring in the late 1980s. That shortage, as others before had been, was short-lived. However, this nursing shortage is not only lingering on, but is predicted to increase dramatically.

"Many societal and health care factors have coalesced to make this shortage uniquely different from those of the past. As societal roles have changed, more and more women who earlier might have chosen nursing now choose other professions, even as nursing remains primarily a women's profession. Our 2002 data indicate that only 4% of New Jersey nurses are male.

"At the same time, our nation's citizens are growing older, living longer, and, therefore, are more likely to need hospital and other health care services. Similarly, 40% of New Jersey RNs are over the age of 50, while only 5.5% are age 30 and under. This suggests that large numbers of working Registered Nurses (RNs), the baby boom generation, will begin to retire soon and the necessary replacements will not be there to care for an aging population. Hence, retaining and increasing the existing supply of RNs is one area addressed in this report."

The report makes what it calls "evidence-based recommendations" for action to be taken by the state of New Jersey in order to avert what it deems a "public health crisis." To wit:

A. Nurse Workforce Supply: Increasing Educational Capacity

1. Expand enrollment capacity for students entering generic nursing programs by increasing State support to New Jersey schools of nursing.

2. Recruit and retain nursing faculty by subsidizing nursing faculty salaries to make them commensurate with other employers of nurses with graduate education.

3. Increase the pool of qualified nursing faculty by providing additional incentives for employers and employees to support those enrolled in master's degree nursing programs and doctoral level education.

B. Nurse Workforce Supply: Retaining and Increasing the Nurse Workforce

4. Offer grants to New Jersey health care facilities to seek, receive, and actively maintain accreditation for excellence in nursing from the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Magnet Recognition Program®.

5. Supply grants to health care employers to implement work-study programs that offer flexible part-time hours with full-time salary and health care benefits to employees enrolled in RN programs in schools of nursing.

C. Workforce Development: Improving Quality through Nursing Research

6. Allocate a dedicated line of funding within the annual State budget, or a Department thereof, to provide operating funds for the NJCCN to maintain and sustain its legislative mandates.

I applaud NJCCN for their dedication to nursing and obvious concern for public health. While these recommendations may not fit the needs of all fifty states, it is clear that comprehensive, forward-thinking, and thoughtful plans must be made for the future, or we will all---healthcare providers and consumers alike---suffer the consequences. Nursing is "the first line of defense" in many clinical settings, and nurses have proven through the decades that they are an integral and crucial part of the healthcare team in a variety of venues. Protecting the public from a massive nursing shortage which could cripple the healthcare infrastructure in this country is a Herculean task of monumental importance and timeliness, and NJCCN has added yet another strong voice to the chorus calling for action. But who, pray tell, is listening?

reference:
http://nurselinkup.com/blogs/articles/archive/2007/08/27/nursing-shortage.aspx