Nursing Shortage Affecting Faculty

The nursing shortage is greatly affecting all healthcare facilities and health centers all across the nation. Even though nursing has become more of an attractive career to the general population, it doesn't seem to be helping end the scarcity. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the enrollment for nursing schools is up from a 3.7 percent increase in 2001 to a 13 percent increase last year. (Larson 2006) This is splendid news to the nursing field with hopes of ending or curtailing the shortage. Well it may be excellent news in one point of view, but in another point of view, the nursing deficiency is significantly affecting the faculty that is responsible for educating the future nurses. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services estimates that by 2020, the United States will need 2.8 million nurses. (Larson 2006) The problem with increasing the supply of nurses is the lack of qualified instructors or nurse's unwillingness to become a faculty member. The NLN estimates the total number of budgeted, unfilled, full-time nursing faculty positions in the country at 1,390. (Larson 2006) The ethical concern stems from the shortage issues and how incapable we are of rectifying the serious nursing shortage. While studying the shortage they related six domains that relate directly to the core of the problem. The six domains include education, work environment, technology, the health care delivery system, regulatory restrictions and financing. The severe problems that link to each of the domains are not being solved and continue to cause an increase in the number of nurses leaving the field. The ethical dilemma that concerns me with this situation is how the domain areas are lacking quality based on quantity. When we see units filled with patients and the number of nurses is inadequate, we can only see ethical downfall as an end result. Without an increase in the numbers, we will continue to see the delivery of healthcare plummet. Most of the shortage can be contributed to the nurses who have been in the field for many years are coming to retirement age. Even most faculty is considered close to or at the retirement age. How can we solve our own problem if we are unwilling to become faculty and help end the shortage? Being a nursing faculty has really opened my eyes to issues that need addressed in the nursing field. So many times while I am at the hospital with my students, nurses approach me about becoming an instructor. I always encourage them to give it an try and see what they might think. I encouraging them with some great benefits of being an instructor and hope that it helps to persuade them. The articles bring up excellent points about why nurses will not take a faculty position. The deciding factor is usually the pay scales between being a staff nurse and a faculty member. I agree whole heartedly with this being the main reason for the shortage in nursing faculty. The salary was the factor that made me take a lot longer to decide to take a position as a nursing instructor. Being a staff nurse and working as an agency nurse paid me very well. The college has a low starting wage and requires you to come in as a part-time adjunct. So you can see how difficult it is for nurses to give up their high paying jobs.

Integrating Information to Profession Practice

When dealing with the public in general, when it comes to nursing or becoming a nurse, it is usually an area that not a lot of people show much interest. We need to look to our leaders and find ways to demonstrate that nurses are the critical discrepancy in the delivery of health care. Without adequate supply of nurses we can not possibly achieve the goals of ensuring access to affordable high-quality healthcare. (Spetz, J. 2003). Offering the nursing population more incentive to become faculty would surely help increase the number of applicants. If staff nurses are making a certain sum of money to work in a hospital and nursing faculty are in there with their students, it is only fair that they should have more competitive salaries. After all the nurse educators are helping contribute to the nursing population and we are in the hospitals working side by side with nurses. Our students are all over the hospital and assisting the nurses with their patient and making the nurse's job easier. I know that the nurses don't always see it that way, but truly our students do a lot while they are in the clinical setting. One article brought up a good point for helping convince our nurse to become involved in the education of new nurses. Help them to think that they are not leaving the clinical practice, but rather they are enhancing it by expanding clinical knowledge through research. (Phillips 2003) One reason we always seem to get from the nurse is they don't want to lose their clinical skills. Well when I am at the hospital or in the lab with my students, I always get to use my skills and in the process teach someone else. Again, I do agree with the articles stating that it is first and foremost the pay scale that causes the unwillingness to become nurse educators.

The Possibility of Seeing Change

My outlook on ending the nursing shortage in the education portion of it or in the hospitals side is very grim. Through being active in the career of nursing and nurse education, I find that most people become interested in the nursing career because of the tremendous increase in wages over the years. They are not blessed with that calling of wanting to be a nurse in every characteristic of the role. When you decide you want to be a nurse, it is usually because something or someone touched your heart and you felt the desire to be there to help others. Since I was a very small child I have wanted to be a nurse. That never changed throughout my high school years and even when I didn't pass my NLN exam to enroll in a nursing program. We are attracting more people to the program but not for the right reasons. Some students are going through the motions, but they have no compassion or empathy for their patients. We need to attract individuals that will develop into great nurse and excellent advocates for their patients. In order to encourage the development and deployment of nursing personnel with skills appropriate to the health care system, the public, policy makers and the profession must engage in ongoing long-term workforce planning, regardless of the perceived or real pressures related to the short-term demand for nursing services. (Staiger, 2004)Element nine of the Code for Nurses, states: "the nurse participates in the profession's efforts to establish and maintain conditions of employment conducive to high quality nursing care." The interpretive statements further add the "responsibility for conditions of employment" and "maintaining conditions for high quality nursing care." (American Nurses Association) We have seen in several discussions this semester that the shortage of nurses is really affecting how well we can continue to conduct ourselves by the standards of the code for nurses. As the shortage grows the work conditions and quality of nursing care diminishes more and more. Currently in Florida, hospitals are recruiting nurses from the Philippines by the dozens. These nurses come over here and can barely speak a word of English. This is one of the ways they predict they can end the nursing shortage. These nurses are getting paid less than the nurses from America and have learned a different way of patient care. It sounded like a good idea and seemed to be helping with the shortage. Once they began functioning in our hospitals and discovering that they are making less money but working the same amount of hours, let's just say it didn't go over very well. My evaluation of the problem is that it is not likely to change in the next 5 - 10 years. Even with the new cultural advantages we have seen and the technological trends are not going to help the situation that is affecting the shortage. At this point in my career, I see a lot of nurse wanting to advance their education to become mangers and take corporate office jobs. We don't see them wanting to stay floor nurses or become faculty members. In order to correct this problem they are going to have to find some way to increase the salaries and benefits of becoming a nurse educator. Once a nurse becomes burned out, it is not likely she will want to become an instructor and influence new nurses. Most of the time, the nurses who are getting out are doing so because they are tired of the long hours and the lack of support. These nurses are not good advocates for students. Usually they are very negative and put a lot of doubt in the student's heads. I feel that the resources being used to help end the shortage are only intensifying it and making more ethical problems. The nurses that come from the Philippines are unable to communicate properly and their cultural beliefs have great conflict with caring for their patients. From a nationwide professional standpoint, several other approaches need to be contemplated, such as creating a new educational and research training ritual of inspiring nurses to enter doctoral study earlier in their profession and supplying them with needed backing. In addition, the nursing faculty shortage needs to be positioned as an important and imminent issue on the national health policy agenda. These strategies will require strong, visible leadership at the institutional, state, and national levels. (Staiger, 2004)This is a very true accurate statement that I agree is one of the main issues when dealing with the nursing shortage. Without strong visible leadership, there won't be any valuable changes to help the current shortage. When we start to see support from the state and national levels, we may seem some possibilities of change.

References

Hinshaw, A. (2003). A Continuing Challenge: The Shortage of Educationally Prepared Nursing Faculty. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing . Vol. #6,

Spetz,, J. (2007).What is Behind HRSA'S Projected Supply, Demand,. Health Services. 34(5), 993-1010.

Fang,, Di (2006).Special Survey of AACN Membership on Vacant Faculty Positions for Academic Year 2006. American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

Phillips, Kelly Di (2003).Nurse Educator Shortage Fuels Clinical Shortage. AMN Healthcare.

Larson, Laurie (2006).Who will Teach the nurses we need?. Hospitals & Health Networks;. Vol 80 ,

Burkhardt, M. & Nathaniel, A. (2002). Ethics & issues in contemporary nursing (2nd ed.) New York: Delmar.

Rosseter , Robert (2005).With Enrollments Rising for the 5th Consecutive Year, U.S. Nursing Schools Turn Away More Than 30,000 Qualified Applications in 2005. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing .