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t’s
the first day of the fall semester and Cynthia Maskey, associate dean of
nursing at Lincoln Land Community College, has already lost one of her
teachers.
An adjunct nursing instructor gave up the part-time
teaching position in Springfield for a full-time job with benefits in
another city.
Despite the instructor’s departure coming in
the middle of the perennial day-one ritual of scaring the scrubs off
entrants to the school’s rigorous nursing program, Maskey
doesn’t have any hard feelings. She says the woman made a decision
that was best for her family, plus she did Maskey a favor by agreeing to
help out until the school finds her replacement.
Besides, that’s just how it goes these days.
“We snatch each other’s faculty away all the time,” says
Maskey, who has spent her entire 21-year teaching tenure at Lincoln Land.
With the allure of big bucks at hospitals for nurses
— the healthcare professionals who administer shots, dress wounds,
and provide day-to-day patient care — it’s no surprise that few
are willing to put in extra study hours needed to earn a master’s
degree only to make less money teaching the next generation of nurses.
However, with so many new practitioners stuck in the
bottleneck of nursing school, with too few experienced nurses to train
them, members of the aging and ailing baby boom generation will not get the
healthcare services they’ll need. At Lincoln Land, for example,
students seeking admittance to the registered nurse program can wait
anywhere from a year to 18 months before being admitted.
The situation is the worst Maskey has seen in her two
decades at the college, and is likely to strain Illinois hospitals, nursing
homes, and even state prisons. Health facilities across the spectrum are
facing severe understaffing problems, putting patient care and
nurses’ safety in jeopardy.
Maskey recalls surpluses of nurses in the mid-1980s
and the mid-1990s, but no more: “In the past, there’ve been
nursing shortages and nursing gluts. But that doesn’t happen anymore.
This is the shortage that is here to stay.”
egistered
nurses, who make up the largest segment of healthcare professionals in the
U.S., have really been in short supply since World War II. In 2000, there
were 110,000 fewer nurses than needed — a figure that is expected to
triple by 2020. In fact, even the nurses will need nurses as the average
age of RNs is about 47.
Illinois fully recognizes the scope of the nursing
shortage crisis, as outlined in an Illinois Department of Financial and
Professional Regulation workforce survey completed in the fall of 2007.
The report identifies an aging nursing workforce,
challenges to recruitment and retention, and too few faculty as primary
obstacles to alleviating the state’s nursing shortage. Shoring up the
state’s pipeline of available nurses within five, 10, and 15 years is
key, according to the report. In addition, it goes on to say, “While
the issue of how to attract people into nursing is important . . .
workforce planners have to begin thinking strategically about how to retain
nurses already in the workplace,” or keep “wisdom in the
workplace.”
Age is another factor, as many nurses are themselves
baby boomers. In an 18-county region of west-central Illinois that includes
Sangamon County, 64 percent of registered nurses are over the age of 45.
There have been attempts to intercede, however. In
2006, Gov. Rod Blagojevich authorized $3.5 million in initiatives aimed at
offsetting the shortage of nurses in the state. Despite these efforts to
bolster the number of nurses working in Illinois, critical gaps remain.
Nowhere is the need more pronounced than in state
prisons. Earlier this month, Illinois Department of Corrections officials
issued a directive ordering that inmates requiring acute medical care not
be housed at Stateville or Pontiac correctional centers “until
nursing staffing is improved.”
Elwood Thompson, program director for Illinois
Nursing Association, which represents healthcare workers, says his
members, who provide care for inmates, guards, and civilians working in the
prisons, are overburdened with huge caseloads.
Thompson says that at one prison, there’s a
correctional officer who just happens to also be registered nurse and
sometimes steps in to relieve the staffing shortage.
“You’re a nurse and a guard? Well can you nurse
and guard at the same time? What kind of strain does that put on the
employee?” he wonders. “That puts us in a quandary because we
want [patients] to get the help. We want the services provided but we
don’t want some Band-Aid solution to end up being a long-term
solution.”
Derek Schnapp, spokesman for the IDOC, says that
addressing the shortage is a priority for the agency as well as private
companies with whom the state contracts to provide nursing care at IDOC
facilities — Peoria-based Health Professionals Limited and
Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Wexford Health Services.
“IDOC realizes that there is a competitive
environment for nurses. There may be some shortages at some facilities,
however, IDOC as well as our vendor, aggressively recruits nurses,”
Schnapp says.
Thompson, whose organization is currently in contract
talks with IDOC, says he sympathizes with the current budget crunch but
that the well-being of INA members is paramount.
“I feel for the state, but I feel more for my
nurses,” he says.
ursing
professionals also say fewer young people are going into nursing. Even
though LLCC’s waiting list contains the names of hundreds of
students, Maskey says she has seen fewer young people these days coming
into the field that “involves long hours and hard work.”
It takes “a special person” to be a
nurse, agrees Sharon Canariato, director of nursing practice for the
Illinois Nurses Association.
“You have to be caring and compassionate. I
would want to see that kind of person in a nursing role. If they’re
just in it for the money, they won’t be satisfied,” she says.
“There’s nothing better than knowing you helped a patient or
sitting with senior citizen and hearing their life story.”
Recognizing the need, hospitals such as Memorial
Medical Center in Springfield have set up programs to introduce high school
students to the nursing field and put them on the path to eventually
landing jobs through the hospital’s Teens Experiencing Nursing, says
Jennifer Davis, a Memorial human-resources director. In addition, 10 to 15
of Memorial’s nurses serve as adjunct faculty to area nursing
education programs.
Another reason for the nurse shortage, says
registered nurse and LLCC trustee, Cinda Edwards is that more career
opportunities exist for women today. When she was a young woman
contemplating her career, she wavered between teaching and nursing.
Although both fields ensured employment security, Edwards chose to become a
nurse instead of a teacher. In the 29 years since graduating from Lincoln
Land, Edwards, says she’s seen more opportunities open up within the
nursing field.
Many nursing students, she says, choose to go after
more lucrative jobs as nurse practitioners and nurse anesthetists, who work
alongside anesthesiologists and earn more than $100,000 per year, both of
which require advanced degrees. Such specialties don’t double as
conventional nurses.
“It doesn’t take the place of a nurse.
You still need somebody that takes care of the patients at the
hoÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂspital and somebody
that administers the shots, gives the medicine, does the IV, does the
dressing change. And if you’re going to school to be a nurse
practitioner or a nurse anesthetist you’re not really filling that
role,” Edwards says.
Additionally, Edwards, a nurse at Springfield
Priority Care, says nurses nowadays devote more time processing insurance
forms and dealing with other forms of red tape.
“The insurance rules and all that are a huge
part of the job so you spend a lot of your time doing paperwork and not the
part that you enjoy — actually spending time with the
patients,” she says.
ÂÂÂThe way Canariato sees it, nurses are
just getting burned out faster, which puts patients and nurses’
careers at risk.
“All of the research shows that when a nurse is
fatigued, the chance of error skyrockets. If she makes a great enough error
she could lose her license.
“It’s hard to go into work every day when
there’s not enough staff,” she says.
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2008.
