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Examining the nursing faculty shortage

By sciencetolife on May 14, 2007.

i-527d5c0f81f76a6ce20dc5974e7d8b33-5-14-07 RN.jpg There is a need for nurses with higher degrees to serve as faculty and train the future generation of nurses. A study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) examined the availability of nursing faculty in North Carolina. It found that nurses are not pursuing advanced degrees in sufficient number to meet the demands for nurses in faculty and advanced practice roles. According to the paper schools of nursing cite a lack of qualified nursing faculty as a primary barrier to program expansion.

The study followed a total of over 8,000 nurse graduates from North Carolina for 10 or 20 years starting in 1984 or 1994 and examined how they were using available educational pathways to acquire the degrees necessary for teaching.

Among other findings, the authors discovered that younger age at entry into nursing, male sex and belonging to a racial or ethnic minority were associated with being more likely to pursue higher academic degrees.

While the number of RNs has increased in the past decade they found that not enough are getting advanced degrees and even fewer are trying to become educators.

"This study has practice implications in that it questions where and how we will find the next generation of advanced practice nurses," said Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN and editor-in-chief of AJN. "This is not about whether one individual nurse is better than another, but rather if we believe more education will benefit nurses, patients and society. The care and science behind nursing has become far too complex for nurses to not continue their education."

A recent supply-and-demand forecast about nursing faculty in North Carolina projects that by the year 2020, there may be fewer than half the faculty needed to train new nurses in that state.

The situation in North Carolina may be a grim forecast of what is to come in other states.

It is also anticipated that by 2020 there will be serious nursing shortages across the country with only enough full-time RNs to meet 80% of the projected demand.

According to this EurekAlert press release:

Many states, including North Carolina, have sought to increase their annual output of RNs. In 2005, the National League for Nursing reported that from 2003 to 2004, admissions to all prelicensure RN programs increased by approximately 21%. However, many U.S. nursing programs have reached capacity; for the 2004-05 academic year, 147,465 qualified students were denied admission.

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Thanks for posting about one aspect of the nursing shortage. You didn't delve into the sources of the shortage, but here are a few factors:
Earnings by faculty fall far behind earnings of the newest associate degree educated nurse; therefore not only is there no return on investment, but faculty lose from the day they enroll in a program to prepare themselves as faculty.

Working conditions for untenured faculty are brutal: overloaded clinical groups of ten students, demands to travel to multiple clinical sites and unreimbursed travel costs, demands to teach in multiple clinical and didactic courses, expectations to publish, serve on faculty committees and take on student advisement loads, high demand for research with few funding and resources availability and very low professional respect and prestige.

I taught for a few years, and unless I worked at a second full time clinical job, there was no way to make ends meet.

Because most faculty have little daily contact with clinical nurses, in general, those nurses speak scornfully and disrespectfully of faculty. There is very little nursing collegiality.

I blog about these factors as well as practice models which would change the above. I hope that things get shaken up because if they don't, the "free market" won't include many nursing faculty in the very near future.

Dear N=1
Thanks for sharing your personal experiences as a nursing faculty and highlighting some sources of the shortage. It's always great to get insight from someone with your experience.