Blog | nurse shortage

Exploring the Need for More Nurse Educators in Healthcare

Fri, Apr 21, 2023 @ 11:20 AM

GettyImages-1342275996 There is a growing need for more Nurse Educators to address the current shortage of Nurses and ensure the future generations of Nurses are well-trained and prepared to provide quality care.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Projections 2021-2031, the Registered Nursing (RN) workforce is expected to grow by 6% over the next decade. The RN workforce is expected to grow from 3.1 million in 2021 to 3.3 million in 2031, an increase of 195,400 Nurses. The Bureau also projects 203,200 openings for RNs each year through 2031 when Nurse retirements and workforce exits are factored into the number of Nurses needed in the U.S.

The Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) workforce, including Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Anesthetists, and Nurse Midwives, is expected to grow much faster than average for all occupation, by 40% from 2021 through 2031, according to the BLS’ Occupational Outlook Handbook. Approximately 30,200 new APRNs, which are prepared in master’s and doctoral programs, will be needed each year through 2031 to meet the rising demand for care.

Nurse Educators play a vital role in the education and training of Nursing students and are responsible for developing and delivering curriculum, designing and implementing clinical experiences, and evaluating student progress.

The shortage of Nurse Educators at Nursing schools across the country are limiting student capacity at a time when the need for Nurses continues to grow.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), budget constraints, an aging faculty, and increasing job competition from clinical sites have contributed to this crisis.

However, increasing the number of Nurse Educators is critical to addressing the Nursing shortage and ensuring that there are enough qualified Nurses to meet the needs of patients.

There are several strategies that can be implemented to increase the number of Nurse Educators:

Increase Funding

Providing increased funding for Nursing education programs can help schools hire additional faculty and offer competitive salaries and benefits packages.

It's recommended, Congress pass legislation that would invest in Nursing faculty, clinical placements, and Nursing program facilities so that colleges and universities have the resources to enroll and graduate more students.

Tuition Forgiveness

Providing tuition forgiveness or loan repayment programs for Nurses who pursue advanced degrees in Nursing education can help incentivize Nurses to become Educators. Learn more about loan forgiveness or loan repayment programs here.

Mentorship Programs

Providing mentorship programs to support new Nurse Educators can help with their retention and success in the field. These programs are meant to encourage mutual professional growth between both the mentor and the mentee through a dynamic and supportive relationship.

Flexible Scheduling

People everywhere are demanding a shift toward work-life balance. Healthcare professionals are constantly working long hours, with little to no flexibility in their schedules. Offering flexible scheduling options can help attract individuals who may be interested in teaching but have other commitments, such as family or outside work.

Professional Development

Nurse Educators are tasked with nurturing the growth and education of Nurses, but they also need opportunities for growth and development. Offering opportunities for ongoing professional development, such as attending conferences or pursuing advanced degrees, can help keep Nurse Educators up-to-date on the latest Nursing practices and research.

Collaborations with Healthcare Facilities

Partnerships between Nursing schools and healthcare facilities can help provide clinical experiences for Nursing students and provide opportunities for Nurses to transition into teaching roles.

Katie Boston-Leary, PhD, RN, Director of Nursing programs at the American Nurses Association, told Becker's Hospital Review, she views it as "building a bridge" between schools and hospitals to train Nurses in real-world healthcare situations. Additionally, she said, growing an in-house team of Nurse Educators provides a pipeline for hospitals who can be actively involved in cultivating their own future workforces.

By implementing these strategies, Nursing schools and healthcare organizations can work together to address the shortage of Nurse Educators and make sure future generations of Nurses receive the education and training they need to provide high-quality patient care.

Topics: new nurses, new nurse, nursing school, nurse, nurses, Nurse Educators, nurse shortage, nurse training

Nursing Organizations Collaborate On A Staffing Think Tank

Posted by Erica Bettencourt

Tue, May 10, 2022 @ 10:12 AM

GettyImages-1310894409

For many years, the healthcare field has struggled with staffing issues, including the Nursing shortage. The COVID-19 pandemic brought these issues front and center. Everyone including Patients, Nurses, and Health Systems benefit from higher staffing rates.

Improved staffing levels reduce:

Mortality rates
Length of stay
Readmission rates
Preventable health care associated injuries and illnesses such as falls, infections, and pressure injuries

According to research:

Higher numbers of patients per Nurse was strongly associated with the administration of the wrong medication or dose, pressure ulcers, and patient falls with injury.
Short-staffing increases patients’ risk of death by between 4% and 6%. This risk is higher within the first five days of admission.

Five organizations came together in 2018 to form the Partners for Nurse Staffing in a collaborative effort to explore new solutions for Nurse staffing issues. In early 2022, they launched the National Nurse Staffing Think Tank.

The Partners for Nurse Staffing includes:

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)
American Nurses Association (ANA)
American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL)
Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA)
Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)

The think tank made recommendations to address the Nurse staffing crisis within a 12-18 month implementation timeframe.

The recommendations include:

Healthy Work Environment

Elevate clinician psychological and physical safety to equal importance with patient safety through federal regulation.
Specialty Nursing organizations should investigate evidence related to scope of practice and minimum safe staffing levels for patients in their specialty.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Implement Inclusive Excellence, a change-focused iterative planning process whereby there is deliberate integration of DEI ideals into leadership practices, daily operations, strategic planning, decision-making, resource allocation and priorities.

Work Schedule Flexibility

Build a flexible workforce with flexible scheduling, flexible shifts and flexible roles.

Stress Injury Continuum

Address burnout, moral distress, and compassion fatigue as barriers to Nurse retention.
Incorporate well-being of Nurses as an organizational value.

Innovative Care Delivery Models

Implement tribrid care delivery models that offer a holistic approach with three components, including onsite care delivery, IT integration of patient monitoring equipment, and ambulatory access and virtual/remote care delivery. This approach will improve access, patient and staff experience, and resource management, with continuous measurement for improvement and adjustment for sustainability and support.

Total Compensation

Develop an organization-wide formalized and customizable total compensation program for nurses that is stratified based on market intelligence, generational needs and an innovative and transparent pay philosophy that is inclusive of benefits such as paid time off for self-care and wellness and wealth planning for all generations.

The time for action is Now. Nurses, and their patients, must have proper staffing levels in order to provide the best care possible!

Topics: nurse staffing, staffing levels, nurse shortage, healthcare staffing, think tank, staffing crisis

U.S Facing A Shortage of Health Care Workers As Pandemic Rages On

Posted by Erica Bettencourt

Tue, Dec 29, 2020 @ 11:42 AM

covidnurses Nurses are a critical part of healthcare and make up the largest section of the health profession. According to The American Nurses Association (ANA), more Registered Nurse jobs will be available through 2022 than any other profession in the United States.

As predicted by health officials, the United States is seeing surges of Coronavirus cases from the holiday season. As health systems and hospitals deal with the surges, they are worried about finding enough medical workers to meet the demand.

“What we see now is just the beginning of the post-Thanksgiving peak,” said Eric Toner, senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s going to be huge, and it’s going to be awful.”

The problem is especially dire in intensive care units which are overcrowded with a record number of critically ill patients.

An article from the New Yorker stated, at least half of all states are now facing staff shortages, and more than a third of hospitals in states such as Arkansas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Wisconsin are simply running out of staff. Usually, an ICU Nurse might care for two critically ill patients at a time. Now, some are caring for as many as eight patients at once.

In some situations, patients have been transported hundreds of miles for an open bed. Some patients have been moved from Texas to Arizona as well as central Missouri to Iowa.

According to ABC News, hospitals in some states are enlisting retired Nurses and Nursing students. In Alabama, more than 120 students and faculty members from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Nursing school began helping with care last week at UAB Hospital.

In some states, health officers have amended orders that allow health care workers who tested positive for COVID-19, but are asymptomatic to continue working.

To free up healthcare workers, hospitals are asking medical and Nursing students, firefighters, and EMTs to administer Coronavirus vaccines.

According to Reuters, nearly 10 million doses have been delivered across the country, but only about 1 million administered due to staffing shortages at hospitals and the special requirements for preparing the shots.

Nancy Foster, the American Hospital Association’s vice president of quality and patient safety, said she’s heard from two dozen hospital leaders over the past two weeks, warning her of staffing shortages.

Travel Nurses are usually a good option to help fill open positions, but the pool of available travel Nurses is drying up as demand for them jumped 44% over the last month.

Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s Health and Human Services secretary, said the state is “lucky to get two-thirds” of its requests for travel Nurses fulfilled right now.

The main hope here is for cases to decrease by people following COVID-19 guidelines such as quarantining and wearing masks.

Topics: nursing shortage, nurse shortage, COVID-19, coronavirus, short staffed

OBGYN Shortage Is Extremely Dangerous For Expecting Mothers

Posted by Pat Magrath

Thu, Aug 18, 2016 @ 11:55 AM

As our population continues to grow, there are increasing demands on our healthcare system to handle the growth in the number of babies born every year in the US. Do we have enough physicians and midwives to handle the demand for medical services? The answer is No, we don’t. If you’re in a major city, the chances of receiving good maternal healthcare increases, but for those in rural areas, it’s becoming very difficult.

This article explains the situation in our country and offers some potential ways to increase access and delivery of good maternal healthcare. What do you think about the suggestions offered? Do you have any ideas to share on this subject?

Faced with a shortage of obstetricians and gynecologists and nurse midwives, several states are considering proposals that advocates say would improve healthcare for women.

But with the female population of the United States and number of babies born here projected to increase sharply over the next decade and beyond, scholars and medical organizations say more dramatic changes are needed to ensure that the medical needs of American women are met.

One possibility: easing restrictions on nurse midwives, who attend to labor and delivery and also provide routine primary and gynecological care for women of all ages. Other steps under consideration include offering financial incentives to encourage more medical professionals to specialize in maternal health care and to encourage them to locate in regions with extreme shortages, particularly in rural areas.

“It’s very simple,” said William Rayburn, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of New Mexico who has written on maternal health issues. “Our population is continuing to grow faster than we are producing ob-gyns.”

Nearly half the counties in the U.S. don’t have a single obstetrician/gynecologist and 56 percent are without a nurse midwife, according to the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM).

“There are women in California who have to drive hours in order to see an ob-gyn,” said California Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, a Democrat.

The workforce shortage can have dangerous consequences, and may help explain why a relatively high percentage of American women die as a result of pregnancy, said Eugene Declercq, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University who has studied the ob-gyn workforce.

Burke is author of a bill in the California Legislature that would remove the requirement that nurse midwives practice under the supervision of doctors, a change that supporters say would boost maternal health services in underserved areas. There is a similar effort in North Carolina, and many other states have adopted those reforms over the last decade.

As restrictions have been lifted, the numbers of nurse midwives has risen. The number of nurse midwives has grown by 30 percent since 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But their overall numbers remain low, with about 11,200 in the whole country. There are about 20,000 ob-gyns.

Meanwhile, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is pushing measures in the U.S. Congress that would provide financial incentives to encourage medical school graduates to go into the field.

But even that may not be enough. By ACOG’s estimate, the U.S. will have between 6,000 and 8,800 fewer ob-gyns than needed by the year 2020 and a shortage of possibly 22,000 by the year 2050.

Demographic Shifts

The number of women in the United States is expected to climb by nearly 18 percent between 2010 and 2030, and, with it, the number of births. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 3.9 million births in 2014 and projects that number will rise steadily in the years to come, reaching about 4.2 million births a year by the year 2030.

The number of medical school graduates going into obstetrics and gynecology residency programs has remained steady since 1980, with about 1,205 residents entering the specialty each year, according to Thomas Gellhaus, ACOG’s president.

Most ob-gyns over age 55 are men. But women are almost equal in number in the 45-54 age group and outnumber men at the younger end of the profession. In 2013, more than four out of five first-year ob-gyns were women.

That’s important, Gellhaus said, because female ob-gyns retire about 10 years earlier than their male counterparts and often prefer part-time schedules.

At the same time, Gellhaus and others familiar with workforce issues say, both women and men entering the field are less inclined to make themselves available around-the-clock in the way older practitioners did.

“The traditional model was that ob-gyns made this extraordinary commitment,” said Boston University’s Declercq. “I’ll be there for you, pre-natal, delivery and post-delivery. Women patients loved it, but today’s obs are looking for a better balance in their lives and don’t want to make that kind of sacrifice in their lives and their families’ lives.”

Those shifting attitudes have given rise to the growing use of “laborists” — ob-gyns or nurse midwives who do nothing but attend labor and deliveries in the hospital. That model leaves ob-gyns with time to concentrate on other maternal health issues. More than 250 hospitals now have a laborist on staff.

Another factor is the growing number of doctors entering obstetrics and gynecology who are choosing subspecialties such as gynecologic oncology, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery, further reducing the number available for routine maternal preventive care and normal deliveries. According to ACNM, 7 percent of ob-gyns residents entered a subspecialty in 2000. By 2012, the percentage had grown to 19.5 percent.

To help address the shortage, ACOG and other physicians’ groups are supporting congressional proposals to increase the number of medical residencies by 15,000 positions over a five-year period, with half of those designated for medical specialties in short supply, including ob-gyns.

The federal government spends about $15 billion a year on medical residency education, most of it by way of Medicare, the health plan for the elderly, and Medicaid, the state-federal partnership health plan for lower income Americans. It now funds about 30,000 residency positions a year.

Another proposal backed by ACOG would have the federal government designate obstetrical shortage areas in the country as it currently does with primary care, mental health and dental services. That would make ob-gyns and nurse midwives eligible for financial help with their education debts from the National Health Service Corps.

At least one state, Wisconsin, has begun an initiative to address the shortage. Starting next year, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine will designate one resident in obstetrics and gynecology who will do at least a quarter of his or her training in rural areas with too few maternal health providers.

“The goal is to give them experience in these underserved areas because residents who train in certain settings are likely to locate their practices in similar settings,” said Ellen Hartenbach, an ob-gyn professor and residency program director at the Wisconsin medical school.

The program is the first to train ob-gyns in underserved areas, she said, and it has already attracted interest from medical schools elsewhere in the country.

Bigger Role for Midwives?

Nurse midwives see themselves as part of the solution to the shortage of maternal health services, but they face some legislative hurdles if they are going to play a greater role.

Nurse midwives are registered nurses who also complete an accredited graduate school course of study in midwifery. Licensed (or its equivalent) in all 50 states, nurse midwives are trained in all areas of maternal health, usually can prescribe and administer medications, and they deliver babies, almost exclusively in hospitals or birthing centers. (Another class of midwives, called “certified professional midwives,” perform home births in the U.S., but they are licensed or statutorily authorized in only 29 states.)

In half the states, nurse midwives are permitted to practice independently.

But 25 states require them to practice under the supervision of a doctor or in collaborative arrangements with doctors. But the ACNM and its state affiliates have complained for years that many doctors are unwilling to take on midwives, denying women access to these maternal health care providers.

While ACOG opposes the restrictions on nurse midwives, other physician organizations, including the American Medical Association and many of its state affiliates, have continued to insist that doctor supervision of nurse midwives is essential to patient health.

In North Carolina, where 31 of 100 counties do not have an ob-gyn, nurse midwives must have signed supervisory agreements with a doctor in order to practice. Nurse midwives are fighting a legislative battle to remove the restrictions.

Suzanne Wertman, president of the state chapter of the ACNM, said few doctors are willing to enter into such arrangements because they regard the nurse midwives as competition or can’t afford the steep increases in their medical malpractice premiums such agreements would require.

John Thorp, Jr. a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina agreed that malpractice concerns discourage doctors from entering into those supervisory agreements with nurse midwives.

The ACNM says state Medicaid programs should pay nurse midwives at the same rate they pay doctors for performing the same services, and states should require hospitals to offer nurse midwives the same clinical and staff privileges, including hospital admitting privileges that they extend to physicians.

There is precedent for nurse midwives to play a larger role. In the U.S., physicians deliver 90 percent of the babies. But in other countries, midwives attend the majority of births. In England, for example, over half of deliveries are performed by midwiveswhile ob-gyns concentrate on patients with higher risk pregnancies.

“That model has proven to work,” Declercq said, “and it just makes sense.”

Topics: ob gyn, nurse shortage, nurse midwife

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