Shortage of teachers means shortage of nurses

One way to relieve the shortage of nurses would be to bring back the diploma/certificate programs. There is no reason why a nurse needs a 4-year degree from a university to do his/her job right. The education requirements for nurses and their teachers seem to be out-of-line with how much these jobs really pay. Does a nursing teacher really need a PhD to teach nursing? I don't think so.

I don't know how you can make the statement that the problem is that there is no one to train them. There are plenty of places to get trained. That's a little bizarre thing to write. Do you have something to back this up? I just found lots of jobs and training resources that people are advertising for at www.HealthMedicalCareers.com. I'm doing cont educ and I have my pick of places. It's mostly that people are lazy.

I've been a bedside critical care nurse for over 20 years but because I have an ADN I can't teach. We have newer nurses "fast-tracking" it to advance practice degrees with little clinical experiance..because thay have different letters after their name they are "better" nurses. Same with teachers...someone who has spent most of their time getting a PhD may have little (or certainly less) clinical experience...something that is VERY important in this profession. Reminds me of the old saying..."those that can, do. Those that can't, teach."

As a currently practicing nurse, I know that this article is a crock!!! The shortage of nurses is primarily due to the low pay and unreasonable demands of the job. I read an article several years ago that stated the average, professional college degree job, has 70 to 80 individual tasks which are expected to be done during a days work. A nurses job ranks at the top with greater than 130 items done each shift to complete the days work. Even with this disparity, there is the fact that we as nurses do the dirtiest, most foul things with little if any appreciation or thanks. We have our arms up to the elbow in every crease crevice and bodily orifice the human body contains. Usually with some nasty bodily secretion or other stuff in it. The whole while the patient or family are complaining that we are not meeting their needs or feeding the 350 pound plus patient enough or good enough food. The doctors only find fault and say we are too stupid to care for their patients but their job would be useless without our care. This and many other reasons is why there is a nursing shortage. Yes there is a teacher shortage but not just in nursing. It is across the board due to the fact that they won't pay them enough either. It is more important to pay a football or baseball player 20-30 million a year to entertain the lazy society so they can stay on their couch and get to their wonderful 350 pounds first before they go to the hospital with heart problems.

My wife has been in nursing for over 30 years. She has a teaching degree from a 4 year state university in biological sciences, but because her nursing degree is from a 2 year junior college, she is " not qualified" to teach. If older , more experienced nurses could be shown to be qualified to teach by testing of knowledge and skills, they should be used to alleviate this situation.

Out of all those qualified students that were turned down, there are probably another 15% or more that would have applied if they weren't confronted with a 4 year waiting list, or the promise of being turned down just because of teaching shortages. I had breifly considered going into nursing, but I didn't want to have to wait upwards of 4 years just to START the program, so I opted to become a respiratory therapist. 4 years was the waiting list for the local community college.. the local university was 8 or 9 years. They need to either change the required qualifications for teachers or pay teachers more. I don't blame the nurses for not wanting to teach.. they can make upwards of $30 an hour in clinical practice, versus maybe $20 as a teacher... what to do? One of the problems we have here in Utah is that all of the young women want to become nurses so that they can work in a "feminine" field until they get married and have kids. Then they turn down their job and become houswives. Just to think, that girl's spot in nursing school could have been taken by someone who really wanted the job as a career, not just as a stall before they can get married.

University of Tennessee needs to learn what one of it's nursing educators believes causes hypovolemic shock. She thinks when a patient is going into hypovolemic shock, BP falling, heart rate increasing, patient is confused, sugar level spiking and severly sweatting you should check the room temperature !

/www.wisecountyissues.com>

I left a position teaching in an ADN program because of the low salary. I have always wanted to teach nursing, and I'm willing to go back and obtain my master's degree. I can't do both simultaneously, however, as the college in which I taught won't help fund my advanced degree if it serves to move me higher on the salary schedule! The least costly master's program I found is almost $1000/credit hour-even for a part-time student that's $6000 a semester. I'm now working in the corporate world as a nurse case manager making $20,000+ more than I was paid as an instructor. The nursing community needs to wake up and realize what they're doing to themselves. We need to advocate for higher educator salaries, better access to master's programs with realistic requirements, and greater availability of financial support for nurses seeking higher education.

The stigma that our current nursing culture has placed on ADN and Diploma nurses is ridiculous! The MSN and PHd nurses apparently feel that they are miles above those of us that actually do the bedside nursing care that appears in the papers that they publish in their precious journals that few people read. If nursing schools would go back to an ADN or Diploma program, having ADN or Diploma nurses teach clinical bedside hours would not be an issue. It's not a matter of a shortage of teachers for nursing school, but allowing those with more than adequate nursing knowlege and experience to teach clinical hours. The people with ADN and Diploma nursing degrees are the one's more likely to seek out a 2nd type of employment, like education, to supplement their income. They have the actual experience needed to make these green nursing students into knowlegeable, caring nurses. By expanding the teching pool to ADN and Diploma nurses for these students, there will be more programs avaiable for students to apply for. And by making ADN and Diploma programs available again, students will have the choice as to whether they would like to enter the workforce immediately after finishing this 2 year program or spend the next several years of their lives getting a BSN, MSN or PHd. By having a 2 year option again, there will be more nurses entering the field sooner, gaining the experience needed to mentor those who opt to enroll in nursing programs later, thus ending the cycle of not enough teachers for nurses.

I graduated with honors from Indiana University (Indianapolis campus) with a BSN. This was after I had obtained a BS in Political Science. I worked as a staff nurse and a research assistant for several years. After my children were born I went back to get my MSN...and was carrying a 3.8/4.0 when my husband was transferred to Auburn, Alabama. Because AU had just initiated their MSN program they would not accept any transfer credits from IU. Basically I was told to "start over". Yeah, right. Is there any wonder there are not enough qualified faculty? Just make it so hard that no one wants to jump through the hoops. I am now a stay at home mom...and just one more person who would be teaching right now if AU was not so territorial and stubborn.

Amen, RN1975!

The cost of getting a master's or doctorate degree is highly prohibitive and is mainly what is contributing to the lack of adequate instructors for nursing schools, especially BSN schools.

I have a large amount of experience in geriatrics yet only in the last 5 or 6 years has geriatrics been emphasized in nursing programs, again only minimally in BSN programs. I have a BSN plus some graduate school coursework but I am not allowed to teach in LPN schools because I don't have oodles of med/surg experience, yet I probably am more up-to-date than many hospital nurses because I am an avid researcher.

I study constantly but because of the shortage, the attitudes of administrators, the increased responsibility and liability, I am leaving nursing after 15 years of successful practice. It's simply become more than I want to take on. The disconnect in healthcare is also growing with physicians failing to communicate between specialists and primary care and treating nurses as if they are handmaidens sent to do the work of physicians who think they are God himself.

If more collaboration would occur and preventive care emphasized we wouldn't have a nurse or physician shortage. Only the sickest of patients would need hospitalization.

However, we don't. We don't value human life in this country nor do we respect age and wisdom.

I don't see a solution coming anytime soon, so I am switching to the health and wellness field where my clients will be motivated to alleviate the stress in their lives and live healthier.

I don't know how nurses were trained and retained 30, 40 or 50 years ago, but the system that is in place in America now is clearly not working. My goal after high-school (graduated in 1981) was to become a nurse. However, this plan was side-lined due to my family moving from Africa to America, me getting married and having children, etc. In my mid-30's, I wanted to go back to my original career goal of becoming a nurse. I checked out my options. Nowhere could I find a school of nursing that allowed me to fulfill the educational and training requirements to become a nurse and earn an income at the same time. There are no "internships" or "apprenticeships" available anywhere. I don't know anyone that can afford to not have an income for 2, 3 or more years while training to be a nurse - especially if you are married and have a family. The whole system needs to be revamped. Put nursing training programs back into the hospitals to relieve strain on the local colleges and schools (that still have nursing programs), pay student nurses a livable wage while training, and start actively recruiting in the high-schools during the junior and senior years for the talent in this country.

As an older nursing student, I find that yes, of course, getting into a nursing school is difficult but I also find that many younger students are just not ready to dedicate themselves to such an intense course of learning. I'm now going into my 4th semester of a 5 year BSN program and out of 40 in my original class we're now down to 20 students. These nursing programs are tough and you have to give up a lot of your life to focus on your classes and many of today's younger generation are just not ready to give up the normal college partying.

Also as others have mentioned, we need to convert all these two-year ADN programs to BSN programs. This was a quick fix for the shortages in the 70's and quick fixes are never the solution. In today's medical climate with so many patients and physicians spread so thin, nurses need to take on a bigger role with their patients. If nurses remain as nothing more than physician's aides and never progress to being able to make their own decisions in the short term then the patients are going to suffer. As a BSN, a nurse learns the theories behind health concerns and can make well-educated guess as to a patients health status. They can confer with the physicians, who are rarely able to see their patients, with a more in-depth knowledge of their patients' health so medical treatment can be more accurate. The nurses are able to catch symptoms that the physician and the tests don't. Without this more advanced training, our health care will only get worse.

You have not identified the problem......That is that nurses do not necessarily make teachers and teachers do not necessarily make nurses. By trying to have the profession train its own you jam the system.

This is part of the problem of the medical profession itself, it is not held in check. Nurses I know have told me of the way they are treated by some organizations, hospitals, and doctors. Some a saints on earth, great to work for. The other side of the coin is that they are treated like cattle.

But we all know that not everyone is going to be a brain surgeon. We have slipped into a new political correctness, fueled by the NEA, ACLU, Secular Humanisim of the Courts, driving the deep pocket litigation. It is no wonder that the cream of the crop is selected, and the rest sent packing for janitorial jobs...... great for the people facing surgery, frustrating for those of us who will not be God....

The problem is money.
I'm a RN who would like to teach but the money is an issue. To teach, you need at least a masters degree, which would cost me over $20,000 (at some universities it'd be over $50,000). That would be fine if there was payback in the end, but there isn't. Once I get that degree and get a position teaching, I'd be making less than I make now with my BSN in the hospital (and I mean a LOT less - right now working less than .5 part time, I would be making more than I'd be making as a starting professor working "full time").

This is a major turn off for nurses. If the universities really want nurses to teach, they need to either offer education for free (with an agreement of teaching for X number years) or they need to increase pay by a lot. I cannot take on more debt and get paid less. I know I'm not alone in this position. Those without families or mortgages, sometimes will go for it anyway. But, when I have a mortgage in S.CA and family responsibilities, it just cannot work for us the way it's currently set up.

All interesting comments but again everyone misses the point. There ARE qualified people out there to teach, I know many of them with BSN and MSN. The point is pay. Why would you leave a job to teach when I could make sometimes up to $50,000 more in the field. If the colleges would pay more, they would come. The only reason I am teaching now is that the college I work for recognized the pay issue difference and gave us a 30% raise to keep us and even that only brings me to around $20,000 less than if I went out into the clinical world. It is a hard decision when you are offered more money every day and hire on bonuses that are extremely tempting to work less hours than what you already are doing. Having more programs will not work unless you bring the pay with it!!

Although the article brought up the valid point that there are too few nurse educators for college-run nursing programs, one needs to consider that this is a symptom of a much larger problem. I have felt for quite some time that once clinical nursing education went from hospital-based programs to "academia", with the emphasis on "more well-rounded, acculturated, intelligent persons", that there were aspects of nursing skills and the development of individual "spiritual and caring sense" that went by the wayside. Surely it is easy to perceive how certain nursing skills and nursing care situations are improved by persons with a wide knowledge base, this goes for any successful career. However, where was it written that in order to be a geniunely caring, honest, persevering, and critical thinking nurse, one needs to be taught by another person with no less than a doctorate or masters degree? Also, as with any occupation/career, one must learn the basics incrementally, until degrees of knowledge and experience are attained by that individual.
I agree with some of the other authors in this discussion that looking into other nursing educational programs relevant to the type of nursing skills and care situation required, should be considered. More money for collegiate nurse educators may be a beneficial, albeit overdue, idea, but this will not fix the shortage in educators; it is a bandaid approach for a systemic disease. To diminish the long waiting lists for prospective nursing students, and to create efficient, lower-cost programs for all involved, perhaps those "learn-as-you-work" programs are the answer for certain nursing care situations. The beauty of the nursing career field is that it is a vast, multi-faceted, engaging, and ever-changing "occupation", and with its rich history of heroism and unconditional love for humanity, it will be up to nurses and those who dream of being one to take the helm during this nursing shortage.

Per the article "part" of the problem is faculty salary. Having taught for several years and then moved back into the clinical arena this is almost all of the issue. $30,000/year is HUGE. Many of us with Masters and Doctorates like to teach and are good at it AND ARE VERY GOOD CLINICAL NURSES WITH LOTS OF EXPERIENCE but we have children to send to college, retirement to plan for, etc. I finally quit teaching when I made significantly less than the staff did on the floor on which I was supervising students. One of the staff on the floor had been my student the year before!

Diploma programs are not the answer as they also require faculty!! Virutalization might work for classroom lectures but won't work for clinical rotations. Partnering MSN and ADN nurses for clinical teaching should absolutely be looked at.

Are you people aware that treatment technologies and pharmacologies are light years ahead of where they were 20 - 30 years ago? The registered nurse is in the trenches, at the forefront of patient care having to perform continuous ongoing patient assessment and implementing prescribed medications and treatments. This does not require less education, it requires more. Duh! What good does it do to have a warm body at the bedside who cannot recognize the early signs of patient deterioration, or the implications of administering sophisticated treatments or medications and their potential side effects? Yes, to the bean counters the patient care ratio may look better by cranking out RNs at a shorter, faster rate but does that mean patient quality outcomes will be better? I think not. I've spent over 30 years in health care, most of which has been as a bedside RN and in my opinion we need more intelligent, competent, experienced and educated bedside providers, not less....when you have RNs who come out of nursing programs and can't figure out something as basic as keeping accurate track of intake and output on a patient who may have congestive heart failure and renal failure (a frequent combination) or who gives a patient with a heart of rate of 40 a common beta-blocker medication (which slows heart rate and drops blood pressure) without pause to consider the effects
then there is a problem with either that RNs preparation or high patient load. I'm not referring to off the wall situations, but everyday, day in, day out situations in every hospital in every state or country of the world. Nurses need to be able to understand the physiology of the common human diseases they are expected to care for in order to provide competent care and one does not come by that knowledge with less education or training. The bottom line of this problem is the economics that makes sense in every other industry except, apparently, nursing....pay people enough and they will come....the cream will float to the top. So pay the educators for their advanced degrees and experience and you will have them. (By the way, I am NOT a nurse educator).

I have been a registered nurse for 22 years. I am a diploma school graduate, and went on to obtain my BS and MS in Nursing. I currently work full time as a critical care nurse. I have a talent for teaching and enjoy doing so. I have been approached by nursing programs (AD and BSN) in my area about faculty positions. I can not afford to teach!!! I make $25,000 more each year as a staff nurse than I would teaching in a nursing program. In addition, the benefits I receive from the hospital are much better. Until the nursing programs are willing to increase salaries and offer benefits/incentives that encourage qualified RNs to become nursing faculty, the problem will remain.

Although I enjoy bedside critical care nursing, I know it is not something I want to do until I'm ready to retire (in another 20+ years)! So, I am once more back in school. I will complete my nurse practitioner program next May. I will still have all the challenges and satisfaction of clinical practice, along with increased autonomy in an advanced practice role. In addition, I will have a salary that will enable me to send my children to college and plan for my far away retirement!

If quality healthcare could become the ultimate goal of our community leaders and representatives, than one could surmise that with it, higher pay and respect would be given to those in nursing education, as well as in other social/humanistic positions. This would be mean not only increases in nurse educator salaries, but for all teachers in general, social workers, licensed professional counselors, police officers, and the like. Imagine that! All are notoriously underpaid for the work they do on a daily basis, and who ultimately suffers? Here's the big picture: Change the current mindset of our society that careers that deal directly with human life and death afflictions and suffering are somehow far below the reimbursement standards seemingly inherent in the insurance, communications, marketing, professional sports career paths, etc. (add more on your own!). Good luck.

This whole topic is such a crock. I've been an RN for 26 years. I have a MPH and have applied for teaching positions at Galveston(TX) Community College and Community College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas and been turned down (NV) and not responded to (TX). In Nevada the state rules require at least 75% of the instructor staff have a master's in Nursing the other in a "health related field". Public health is a related field and based on my experience, as an RN, I find public health to be more related to what the focus of nursing is then medicine (teaching health promotion and disease prevention). I conclude that there is a sex bias aspect ,as I'm a straight male RN, ivory tower conceit, or some other bias because neither job had as a requirement listing, teaching credentials or degree and this credential can be obtained as OJT using the University of Indiana on-line teaching in nursing certificate program. So please don't tell me there is a shortage of teachers when there are people, like myself, with years of experience and a desire to teach out there. This is nothing more then turf guarding and wanting more pay and benefits or sexual bias.

This whole topic is such a crock. I've been an RN for 26 years. I have a MPH and have applied for teaching positions at Galveston(TX) Community College and Community College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas and been turned down (NV) and not responded to (TX). In Nevada the state rules require at least 75% of the instructor staff have a master's in Nursing the other in a "health related field". Public health is a related field and based on my experience, as an RN, I find public health to be more related to what the focus of nursing is then medicine (teaching health promotion and disease prevention). I conclude that there is a sex bias aspect ,as I'm a straight male RN, ivory tower conceit, or some other bias because neither job had as a requirement listing, teaching credentials or degree and this credential can be obtained as OJT using the University of Indiana on-line teaching in nursing certificate program. So please don't tell me there is a shortage of teachers when there are people, like myself, with years of experience and a desire to teach out there. This is nothing more then turf guarding and wanting more pay and benefits or sexual bias.