I’ve been within the nursing and nursing schooling area for over 40 years. Whereas being a nurse educator is a rewarding and significant expertise, it additionally opens my eyes to a rising menace in our healthcare system that policymakers should promptly tackle.
Throughout the US, the story is identical: we’re in the course of a severe nursing scarcity — and never simply in our hospitals, docs’ places of work, or clinics. The pipeline that trains and prepares new nurses is struggling, and other people exterior the nursing occupation don’t at all times see that aspect of the issue.
Right here’s the reality: we now have loads of good, succesful individuals who wish to turn out to be nurses. Yearly, packages nationwide obtain functions from keen college students who’re passionate, ready, and able to serve. And yearly, these packages are compelled to show away too a lot of them. In 2024 alone, over 80,000 certified functions had been turned away due to packages having inadequate school, scientific placement websites, preceptors, or classroom house to simply accept each applicant that meets or exceeds its requirements.
This drawback is irritating and heartbreaking. And it’s additionally fully preventable — particularly if leaders in Washington extra totally understood the challenges going through America’s nursing workforce and educators.
I applaud Senators Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Susan Collins (R-ME) for recognizing the urgency of this drawback and championing the Prepare Extra Nurses Act (S. 547) within the U.S. Senate. This bipartisan invoice goals to handle the core of this problem. I urge lawmakers throughout Congress to assist and move this much-needed answer as shortly as potential.
As a former nursing educator/chief and now chief nursing officer of a nurse schooling know-how firm that helps over 60% of the nation’s prelicensure nursing packages, I hear from colleagues each day who’re nervous concerning the nursing workforce pipeline. Packages, massive and small, rural and concrete, are stretched skinny. Skilled educators are retiring, and it’s exhausting to recruit new ones when school salaries can’t compete with what nurses earn in scientific roles. On high of that, some educators could have restricted entry to know-how that may fill useful resource gaps and enhance their effectivity and capability. It’s no surprise faculties are being compelled to show away certified candidates.
The Prepare Extra Nurses Act would assist tackle these challenges by directing the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS), in addition to the U.S. Labor Division, to conduct a assessment of nursing grant packages to establish alternatives to extend school at nursing faculties nationwide, particularly in underserved communities. This invoice would additionally assist strengthen profession pathways for nurses who’ve greater than 10 years of scientific expertise to turn out to be school at faculties of nursing.
Critically, the Prepare Extra Nurses Act would additionally assist the long-term care neighborhood, a sector that’s particularly struggling due to the workforce scarcity. In reality, the senior residing and care sectors will want 660,000 extra staff throughout the nation by 2033 to satisfy the rising demand for long-term care. The Prepare Extra Nurses Act will assist encourage and enhance the nursing pipeline by way of pathways for licensed sensible nurses (LPNs) – who’re a vital a part of the long-term care workforce – to turn out to be registered nurses (RNs).
This invoice isn’t about politics. It’s about addressing the nursing scarcity that threatens to destabilize our whole healthcare system. It’s about making certain {that a} scholar who needs to pursue a profession in nursing isn’t needlessly turned away. And it’s about ensuring these coaching the following era of nurses have the assist they should proceed doing this work.
We’re burning out our present workforce whereas sidelining the following era of nurses. That ought to alarm all of us.
To Congress: Passing the Prepare Extra Nurses Act is an important step we are able to take to alter this. It gained’t remedy every little thing in a single day, however it is going to transfer us in the precise route — with knowledge and technique, we are able to place nursing packages to extend and increase enrollment whereas controlling scholar prices, incentivizing school, and graduating assured and competent nursing graduates.
We have now passionate college students able to serve. We have now skilled educators prepared to show. Let’s be sure our methods are prepared to assist them succeed.
Photograph: asiseei, Getty Photographs
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