by School of Nursing Dean Lucy Marion
Editor's note: Dean Marion's essay partially drew on information from a report, "Who Will Care for Each of Us? America's Coming Health Care Labor Crisis," written by a University of Illinois at Chicago College of Nursing think tank in which she participated.
Baby-boomer nurses can’t help but share a nagging preoccupation these days. We’ve devoted our careers to caring for others, and we find ourselves wondering, “When we retire and get old and frail, who will care for us?”
Among the first boomer nurses, I have watched dramatic and continuous change in the health care system, nursing roles and cycles of nursing workforce shortage. We have witnessed and experienced outrageously short-staffed and oppressive working conditions. I have seen many improvements but we still have far to go.
Nevertheless, boomer nurses individually and collectively have been a driving force of innovation and hope for better health and health care for all. We serve long hours to meet obligations and opportunities on the job and strategize as advocates and entrepreneurs to change health policy and create new systems. We’ve shouldered responsibility for our elders, children and grandchildren and serve as the family nurse for our extended families.
We continue to fill demanding clinician and leadership roles. Together, boomer nurses make up the largest segment of the nursing workforce. Work together, retire together.
The daunting reality is that according to projections, there won’t be enough new nurses to take our place. In 1998, an increase in hospital vacancy rates revealed a workforce shortage, and nursing projections were beginning to look grim. Due mostly to international and older nurses entering the workforce, the shortage eased a little in 2001-03, but these short-term solutions will not sustain the profession when retired boomers increase the demand for care.
Projections are even worse for nurses in academia. Many factors intersect to make nursing faculty positions more vulnerable: lower salaries than market value, heavy teaching loads extending to evenings and weekends and few clinical practice options, to name a few.
The good news is that we have more applicants to nursing programs than ever before. The bad news is that most U.S. nursing programs turn away qualified applicants due to faculty and clinical learning site shortages. The average age of faculty tells us that the boomer retirement will be disastrous to nursing education if we don’t act now.
We are very fortunate that the University System of Georgia, with MCG President Daniel W. Rahn as senior vice chancellor for health and medical programs, is moving rapidly to address this looming crisis. The MCG School of Nursing has implemented several strategies to ensure an adequate faculty workforce, including a new post-master’s Doctorate of Nursing Practice program, salary supplementation for faculty members’ clinical service, the recruitment of several master’s-prepared clinicians and incentives to lure retired faculty back to part-time service. These strategies are working!
I have a few more years for succession planning here at MCG. We will pay careful attention to the MCG nursing faculty workforce who will be ready to take our place. It’s time for boomer nurses to begin passing the torch.
| Medical College of Georgia Today welcomes submissions to the Reflections column of the magazine. Typed essays (approx. 750 words long) reflecting a professional or personal experience should be submitted to: Christine Hurley Deriso, Editor, Medical College of Georgia, FI-1040, Augusta, GA 30912, (706) 721-2124 (phone), (706) 721-6397 (fax), . |