Summit Seeks Solutions to U.S. Nursing and Nursing Faculty Shortage
July 11, 2008 by Becky Ramsey
Filed under Business
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I have a tendency to read and write about medical errors and health care quality (or lack thereof in many cases), but I don’t often read or write about solutions to the problems. Well, when it comes to the nursing shortage an interested group of heavy hitters decided it was time to convene and come up with some solutions. The Nursing Education Capacity Summit was held June 26-27 in Washington, D.C. The summit was convened by AARP, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Labor in an effort to create solutions to the current nurse faculty shortage that is making it difficult to educate and employ an adequate number of nurses.
The summit brought together 18 state teams and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration Division of Nursing to share best practices and to focus on key actions such as policy and regulation, and increasing faculty capacity and diversity in colleges around the U.S. Susan Reinhard, AARP Public Policy Institute Senior Vice President, has stated that “Nurses play a significant role in reducing medical errors and improving health care quality…” and that it is a critical time to start really coming up with solutions to the nursing shortage dilemma.
A new white paper, titled “Blowing Open the Bottleneck: Designing New Approaches to Increase Nurse Education Capacity”, on the issue was released at the summit. The paper can be read free of charge here.
Sources:
Image: PicApp
“AARP, RWJF, Labor Department Seek Solutions to Nursing and Nurse Faculty Shortage” - Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, June 26, 2008
This could be a noble cause. I find it difficult to understand that with all of the layoffs and people out of work that there is not a better system for getting people into nursing school and maintaining a high level of qualified and competent applicants. Part of the problem is burn out in certain areas of nursing which keeps the profession a revolving door.
As for the Department of Labor’s attendance/involvment part of their solution will probably be to outsource the jobs and bring in cheaper workers from overseas which is their mantra for selling out the American worker. Nurses are paid well for what they do and have fought hard to have competitive wages. government involvment seeks to outsource for the cheapest labor. I hope the summit can come up with some real solutions as there are probably many people who would like to enter this noble profession.
Blue Heron,
Thanks for your comment. I was trying to follow-up on the summit and see what came out of it, but I haven’t found much as of yet. The Medical University of South Carolina College of Nursing posted a bit about it on their Web page at http://www.musc.edu/nursing/newsandevents/2008/NurseEdSummit.htm
It doesn’t have much follow-up information, but it does say that the participating state teams that attended the summit will be tracked for one year.