by Morgan Watkins, Louisville Courier Journal –
A looming nursing shortage by 2020 means schools like University of Louisville seeking students.Matt Stone, Louisville Courier Journal
“Code blue!” a University of Louisville nursing student calls out, prompting one of her peers to start doing chest compressions on their patient, a mannequin that just went into cardiac arrest.
They’re in a lab at U of L’s health sciences campus downtown, doing a “death and dying simulation” that mimics a heart attack scenario.
Louisville’s School of Nursing and similar programs across the commonwealth and the country are tasked with training the next generation of nurses — and hospitals are likely to need as many graduates as they can provide in the coming years.
“We have a huge nursing shortage in this country, and it’s only going to get worse,” said Sonya Hardin, the dean of U of L’s nursing school.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing says about 1.1 million job openings for nurses are anticipated by 2024, but enrollment at nursing schools isn’t growing fast enough to meet the expected demand.
The association’s website says several factors are contributing to the shortage, including:
- A sizable portion of the nursing workforce is getting close to retirement age.
- The number of older adults in America is rising, which means the need for certain health care services will, too.
- Insufficient staffing at work is increasing nurses’ stress levels and is affecting their job satisfaction, prompting many of them to exit the profession entirely.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts employment for registered nurses will grow by about 438,000 jobs from 2016 to 2026, a 15 percent increase.
As baby boomers retire over the next five to 10 years, Hardin said, today’s nursing students will help fill those vacancies.
“I don’t know of one single student that doesn’t have a job, which is kind of cool,” she said of the students who are graduating from U of L in December.
U of L’s nursing school has expanded over the past several years, and it now accepts 100 undergraduate students per semester instead of just 60. Hardin, who joined the university in August, eventually wants to double enrollment to 200 students.
Hardin also wants to bring more men on board. About 15 percent of U of L’s nursing students are men, but she wants to boost that figure to 20 percent.
Increasing enrollment isn’t as easy as just deciding to accept more applicants, though.
The association reports U.S. nursing schools turned away more than 64,000 qualified applicants for baccalaureate and graduate programs in 2016 because they didn’t have enough resources — faculty members, clinical sites and classroom space. Budget constraints were also an issue.
Like U of L, the University of Kentucky’s nursing school has experienced enrollment growth over the past few years, according to Darlene Welsh, a professor and assistant dean at UK’s College of Nursing.
UK welcomes 100 students per semester now instead of only 80 for its traditional nursing program, Welsh said. Further expansion isn’t planned in the immediate future because of limitations in classroom space, clinical training opportunities and qualified faculty.
“Expanding the enrollment in a nursing program isn’t a simple matter of saying, ‘Yes, we want 20 more students this fall,'” Welsh explained. “We are probably at capacity.”
Accepting extra students would be tough for Indiana University Southeast’s nursing school, too, because of similar challenges, according to Dean Donna Bowles.
IU Southeast’s program accepts 56 undergraduates per year from an average pool of 90-100 applicants, but welcoming more students would require hiring more professors from a limited pool, finding quality clinical sites and expanding classroom space.
Like some hospitals, IU Southeast has been affected by a wave of retirements, Bowles explained. By May 2019, the nursing school anticipates it will have experienced a 50 percent turnover among its staff in just three years.
Graduates from IU Southeast have good job prospects, though. Bowles said local hospitals are recruiting them early in their senior year.
Employers are snapping up nurses from Bellarmine University as well, said Nancy York, dean of its School of Nursing and Clinical Sciences. Enrollment has stayed relatively stable, with 307 undergraduate nursing students this academic year.
However, York said a 12-month nursing program Bellarmine offers to people who already have a degree in a different field has grown consistently, increasing from about 30 students when York arrived in 1998 to over 100 students today.
“Especially after the recession hit, people needed to find new jobs,” she said. “Going back to school for a year and becoming a registered nurse, which we know has good job security, is a very popular idea.”
Maria George, a 21-year-old on track to graduate in May from Bellarmine’s nursing school, said it’s a little stressful as she prepares to join the workforce after a lifetime of school, but she isn’t worried about employment.
“I know that there will be a job available,” she said. “I feel good … ready to take on the new responsibilities and ready to bring my talents to the nursing field.”
As a new nurse, though, George knows she will need help. And that’s something University of Louisville Hospital is determined to give the people it hires, said its chief nursing officer, Shari Kretzschmer.
U of L Hospital previously struggled with layoffs, staff shortages and, two years ago, a state inspection that said nursing deficiencies endangered three patients.
After a university affiliate took over management of the hospital from KentuckyOne Health last year, though, rebuilding the staff was a top priority.
More than 445 nurses have been hired for U of L Hospital and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center since July 2017, bringing the number of nurses collectively employed at those facilities to about 1,100, Kretzschmer said.
Preventing nurses from burning out and leaving their jobs — or even the profession itself — is important to hospitals as well as nursing schools.
U of L Hospital, for example, puts first-year nurses in a residency program that provides support and guidance as they begin their careers, Kretzschmer said. The retention rate for nurses who recently completed the program was 92 percent.
Although the nation’s nursing shortage is expected to affect hospitals in many communities, U of L Hospital and Norton Healthcare in Louisville have been making preparations to ensure they can recruit enough nurses to meet their needs.
Norton hasn’t felt the impact of the nursing shortage, according to Jackie Beard, the system’s director of talent acquisition and workforce development.
“We’ve been proactively and strategically looking at our workforce pipeline for years,” she said.
And Kretzschmer said U of L Hospital shouldn’t have trouble attracting quality applicants as long as it continues to cultivate a supportive environment and ensures its nurses have opportunities for professional growth.
U of L Hospital and Norton’s hiring efforts may be proceeding apace, but Hardin said it is more of a challenge to recruit nurses in rural areas.
U of L launched a program in Owensboro in 2009 to increase the number of nurses in the western part of the state who have received a bachelor’s-level nursing education, according to a university spokeswoman.
The Owensboro program accepts 20 students per semester, but Hardin said Louisville is seeking the Kentucky Board of Nursing’s permission to raise that to 35 students.
As for Louisville’s campus downtown, Hardin said it will probably take a few more years to double undergraduate enrollment there, as it will require adding more faculty and more classroom space. (One strategy U of L already uses is to hire full-time nurses to teach students on the side.)
One day, Hardin hopes U of L will be able to accept every qualified student. It typically has 20 percent more applicants than it can accommodate, but she doesn’t want to pass over people with a passion for serving others.
“You just don’t want to lose individuals like that to other professions,” she said.
Emily Short, a 20-year-old U of L nursing student, said her mother always told her she had the heart to be a nurse. Neither she nor her classmate, Kimberly Rogers, 21, have anxiety about whether they’ll be hired once they’ve earned their degrees.
It may be harder for students to find work in the specialty they want straight out of college, Rogers said, but they’ll be able to get a job somewhere as a nurse.
“They need them everywhere,” she said. “There’s endless possibilities.”
Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; [email protected]; Twitter: @morganwatkins26. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/morganw.