Nursing News:
Lacking faculty, nursing students turned away

by JAKE ELLISON
The call light is on at Washington¹s acute-care hospitals, but hundreds of would-be nurses are stuck at the front doors of schools, waiting to begin their training.
It¹s an unexpected plot twist in the story of the severe nursing shortage in Washington state and across the country: Thousands of students are clamoring to enter the nursing profession, but schools are forced to turn many of them away because of a dearth of qualified faculty.
Hospitals in the state report that they need nearly 2,000 registered nurses right now, and they expect to need many more as aging baby boomers require more medical care. Nevertheless, Washington schools turned away at least 1,500 qualified students last year, said Troy Hutson, a member of a state task force set up to look into the matter. The state¹s schools graduate about 1,200 registered nurses a year, he said.
³They say there¹s a nursing shortage, and I find that humorous because there are so many applicants² for nursing schools, said Melinda Furrer, a Seattle Central Community College student who has attended numerous nursing-school orientations. She says the orientations are always ³packed.² Standing just outside the door to her math class, Furrer said she has 18 years of experience in health care, and she returned to school to complete classes she¹d need to get into nursing school. She said she¹s discouraged because of the staggering number of applicants, and she expects to be on wait lists for some time.
³I¹m almost 40, and I don¹t want to be in school for too long,² she said.
Just down the hall at SCCC, students Jessica Kennan and Heather McCarthy were still smarting over the last time they were turned away from Shoreline Community College¹s nursing program. McCarthy said she has good grades and is working as a nursing assistant in a Seattle hospital, but she still failed to qualify for the program.
³I didn¹t realize it would be so hard to get in,² she said. McCarthy and Kennan said they have watched the qualifications to enter nursing programs grow tougher, and they fear the crush of students heading to school will raise the bar even higher.
Not enough teachers
Indeed, Bellevue Community College said it was able to accept just 50 out of 130 qualified applicants this fall. The University of Washington said 80 out of 307 people got in, even though 90 percent of the applicants were ³competitive.²
Seventy to 80 nursing students are accepted at Washington State University each semester ‹ but about 280 to 320 ³very stellar² applicants are turned away, spokeswoman Susan Nielson said. [Editor¹s Note: This story has been changed since original publication to correct the figures in this paragraph.] ³We¹d love to take more students,² she said.
The biggest reason for all the rejection letters is a lack of faculty. In 2001, the Washington State TriCouncil for Nursing, an umbrella group of nursing industry associations, reported an inadequate number of educators with doctorates as well as a ³steep decline² in the number of nurses getting master¹s degrees, the minimum level of education required for nurses to teach in Washington.
SCCC is trying to hire three nursing teachers to fill vacant positions, said Jan West, a dean at the school. Consequently, the school has 52 students on a wait list and a ³huge demand² to take even more. West, echoing a broad consensus about the lack of teachers, said pay was a factor because a nurse with a master¹s degree can make $18,000 to $20,000 more a year caring for patients. What¹s more, teachers ‹ unlike nurses ‹ often have to take work home with them in the form of lesson plans, evaluations and grading. Other nursing authorities noted that many nurses who might have gone into teaching are often lured into nurse-practitioner fields, where they have more medical responsibilities, higher profiles and better pay. Cheryl Becker, chairwoman of Bellevue Community College¹s nursing program, said getting teachers into the classroom is only part of the solution. Another area of concern is getting nursing students into hospitals so they can fulfill their clinical requirements.
³There are several nursing programs in Seattle, and we¹re all vying for a place to take students to get clinical experience,² Becker said. ³You can only overwork the hospitals so much.²
Hutson, the member of the state¹s Health Care Personnel Shortage Task Force, said the task force will make suggestions to the 2003 Legislature on how the state can begin to fix the shortage in nursing and other health care fields.
One short-term solution, Hutson said, is to have hospitals help cover teachers¹ salaries and make nurses available to teach students. Many hospitals in the state already have forged such relationships with schools in their areas. In Seattle, both Swedish Medical Center and Children¹s Hospital authorities say they could take more students into the clinical setting if schools varied students¹ schedules, putting some in the hospitals on evenings and weekends. But other limitations exist.
Swedish takes about 500 students a year, and Children¹s works with roughly 200. Authorities at both hospitals said it¹s in their best interests to help get more nurses into the workplace. Nevertheless, they said putting students on their floors adds to the workloads of the hospital¹s nurses and others. It also can be a challenge to find nurses who are good at working with students while juggling multiple patients. ³When you have a couple hundred students coming through, then the demand for the number of bedside nurses who can do this becomes a staffing issue,² said Susan Heath, nurse executive for Children¹s Hospital.
Try, try again
Getting into the UW nursing school took Matt McNulty three tries. ³I thought I was more than ready three years ago,² he said. He has a degree in chemistry, he has worked for years as an emergency medical technician in ambulances and as a medical assistant in the emergency room at Harborview Medical Center, and he taught biology in the Peace Corps.
The first time he was refused entry, he said he figured a little more experience wouldn¹t hurt. ³Last year, I thought, ŒYou¹ve got to be kidding,¹ ³ he said. ³But, this year, if I hadn¹t gotten in, I wouldn¹t have pursued another year.²
NURSING SHORTAGE AT A GLANCE
€ The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations reported that 126,000 nursing positions went unfilled nationally in August, ³and that number is expected to skyrocket just as 78 million aging baby boomers begin placing unprecedented demands on America¹s health care system.²
€ Most registered nurses in Washington are over the age of 40, according to the 2002 report ³Who Will Care for You?² by the Washington State Hospital Association and Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts. ³If the average age of registered nurses in Washington state remains steady, nearly 70 percent of the work force will retire over the next 20 to 25 years,² the report said.
€ The same report said the nursing shortage forces hospitals to refuse some patients, hire expensive part-time or traveling nurses to fill shifts and delay some elective surgeries. Other reports reveal that some Washington hospitals import nurses from foreign countries, such as the Philippines, to fill their needs.
Copyright 2002, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Reprinted with permission.