Nursing educator shortage a problem - Business First of Buffalo:
When four nurse educators retired or resigned from Trocaire College in the spring, nursing director Carol Fanutti worried that she wouldn’t be able to find replacements.
She posted the jobs internally, on the college’s Web site and in the classified section of a local newspaper. By the time the search ended this summer, she had received just five applications. Four of those applicants were hired as new faculty.
“Somehow, somebody materialized,” said Fanutti, who leads 17 full-time and 17 part-time nursing faculty at Trocaire. “We could have used a fifth (instructor), but there’s nobody out there.”
Like many colleges and universities with nursing-degree programs, Trocaire is on the brink of a nursing faculty shortage that will further affect the nationwide scarcity of nurses, according to college administrators. Driven by wide salary gaps between clinical work and academia, the nursing faculty shortage could get worse before it improves, some say.
When four nurse educators retired or resigned from Trocaire College in the spring, nursing director Carol Fanutti worried that she wouldn’t be able to find replacements.
She posted the jobs internally, on the college’s Web site and in the classified section of a local newspaper. By the time the search ended this summer, she had received just five applications. Four of those applicants were hired as new faculty.
“Somehow, somebody materialized,” said Fanutti, who leads 17 full-time and 17 part-time nursing faculty at Trocaire. “We could have used a fifth (instructor), but there’s nobody out there.”
Like many colleges and universities with nursing-degree programs, Trocaire is on the brink of a nursing faculty shortage that will further affect the nationwide scarcity of nurses, according to college administrators. Driven by wide salary gaps between clinical work and academia, the nursing faculty shortage could get worse before it improves, some say.