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Nursing shortage lines up its next target: the elderly
By
Taylor Loyal Bowling
Green Daily News, June 22, 2003 As the
number of elderly Americans increases, the nurses who take care of them
are getting increasingly frustrated with their jobs and a growing number
of them are quitting. This could
be a major problem, say the various organizations who fear the nursing
shortage will be even worse than originally estimated. As nurses are
rapidly dropping off, there seems to be a widespread lack of interest in
the nursing field on the part of younger workers who could replace them. “Frankly,
it’s a less desirable place to work,” said Michal Smith-Mello, senior
policy analyst for Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. “It’s
very stressful.” According to
a 2001 survey released by the Federation of Nurses and Health
Professionals, one in five nurses plans to leave the profession within the
next five years. Half of all nurses surveyed said they have considered
leaving the field. Nurses under age 40 are almost as likely to have
thought about quitting. The levels
of dissatisfaction in nursing is higher than in other professions. Nurses
working in hospitals and nursing homes are even more frustrated than
others in the field. At nursing
homes, “the turnover rates are just remarkable,” Smith-Mello said. Meanwhile,
the 65-and-older crowd in America is expected to double in the next 30
years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Even the
nurses are getting older, with the average age of registered nurses in
Kentucky now at about 41. Already
several states are devising plans to attract more nurses. The Maryland
legislature, for example, passed a law last year that prohibits hospitals
from requiring nurses to work overtime and followed that with
whistleblower-protection legislation that prevents hospitals from taking
action against nurses who report illegal or unfair practices. In Kentucky,
where about 1,700 full-time jobs for registered nurses in hospitals are
unfilled, hospitals are required to use “valid and reliable” nurse
staffing plans. The hospitals are also trying to lure more people to the
profession by offering sign-on bonuses and better benefits. Greenview
Regional Hospital is working with Western Kentucky University to solve the
problem on the local level. In April,
the hospital gave the university a $475,000 gift to the nursing program.
Among other things, it will provide $120,000 for scholarships, $225,000
for unrestricted program funds for nursing and $100,000 to create the
Greenview Regional Hospital Endowed Fund for Excellence in Nursing. “It’s
important to continually invest in the education of our health care
givers,” Greenview CEO Brenda Waltz said in April. The
scholarship portion of the gift will fund at least 10 two-year
scholarships of $6,000. The students will work at Greenview for the same
number of years they receive the scholarships. The
hospital, which currently has three registered nurse vacancies, has
approved 10 scholarships for the fall semester and received 16
applications, said Sherry McDonald, chief nursing officer. A committee,
which McDonald serves on, will meet Monday to review the applications and
begin the selection process. Once the
nurses are hired, the hard part could be keeping them. A 2001
American Nurses Association survey found that 75 percent of nurses
surveyed believed that the quality of the job where they work had declined
in the past two years. More than half said the time they have with
patients decreased. Other common
complaints among nurses include difficult working conditions, tending to
more and sicker patients and an overall lack of respect from patients and
doctors. A large
number of nurses currently considering quitting say they would stay if
these conditions were changed. Increases in staffing, better hours and
higher salaries would make matters much better, according to the
Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals survey. But if these
changes aren’t made, the future could be grim, according to a 2002
report from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
Organizations. The report showed that America’s hospitals have 126,000 unfilled nursing positions and that number is expected to jump to 400,000 by 2020. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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