This is the first article in a series about America's nursing shortage: Part I | Part II
In an era of nursing shortages, high nurse demand and qualified applicants being turned away from nursing programs, there is a need for action to stem the tide.
Nursing has long been touted as one of the best professional career paths for those wishing to enter the healthcare sector. The Bureau of Labor Statistics extolls 16 percent job growth for registered nurses and 31 percent for nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists and nurse midwives between now and 2024.
It all looks statistically rosy on paper, but is reality keeping up with the need?
Faculty shortages hamper growth
There is clear evidence of a nursing faculty shortage in the U.S. The calculus of this situation tells us we may be losing potential nurses to other professions when nursing school candidates are disenchanted with being waitlisted or rejected, even though they have stellar GPAs and attractive resumes.
According to a 2015 study referenced on the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) website, qualified candidates are indeed being rejected:
"U.S. nursing schools turned away 68,938 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2014 due to an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors and budget constraints. Almost two-thirds of the nursing schools responding to the survey pointed to faculty shortages as a reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into baccalaureate programs."
Other data is also cited by the AACN:
"The majority of CEOs identified the shortage of nurse faculty as the most severe followed by allied health, pharmacy and medicine."
"The data show a national nurse faculty vacancy rate of 6.9 percent. Most of the vacancies (89.6 percent) were faculty positions requiring or preferring a doctoral degree. The top reasons cited by schools having difficulty finding faculty were insufficient funds to hire new faculty (61.3 percent) and difficulty in recruiting qualified applicants for open teaching positions (56.5 percent)."
"Efforts to expand the nurse educator population are frustrated by the fact that thousands of qualified applicants to graduate nursing programs are turned away each year. In 2014, AACN found that 13,444 qualified applicants were turned away from master's programs, and 1,844 qualified applicants were turned away from doctoral programs. The primary reason for not accepting all qualified students was a shortage of faculty."
Where will they go?
As the economy recovers and baby boomer nurses retire in large numbers, the need for fresh recruits into the nursing profession will grow. A retiring generation of nurses reflects the national trend of the aging of America. Those aging Americans are already creating a significant increase in the need for qualified healthcare personnel in a variety of clinical milieus.
If more than 69,000 applicants were turned away from nursing schools in 2014 due to a dearth of faculty, where will those candidates go? Some will turn to other professions that are in demand, including physical, respiratory and occupational therapy, radiology and pharmacy.
This begs the question of how many potentially excellent nurses are being siphoned off by other professions due to nursing's inability to meet educational demand.
A hemorrhaging talent pool
There are no easy answers, but the tide of qualified nursing school applicants being rejected needs to be reversed. If nursing is hemorrhaging its potential talent pool, something needs to change. Whether change is propelled by legislative action, loan forgiveness programs or government subsidies of nursing faculty salaries, action is needed.
Nurses are still the mitochondrial powerhouses of the American healthcare system, and a rich nursing talent pool benefits the entire country.
How will we address this significant issue? Who will take inspired action to expand the capacity of our nursing schools? When will we sit up, take notice and embrace those who are clamoring for entry into the most respected profession in the United States?
In the second part of this series, I will examine how to support prenursing candidates in the era of faculty shortages and massive rejections of potential candidates from nursing programs.
