This story is good: The Columbus Dispatch : Nursing schools needing teachers
Holly Herron knows she can't be a flight nurse forever.
Nearly 50 now, she won't always be able to jump out of a helicopter in a cornfield in the middle of the night or crawl into wrecked cars to get to patients.
She'd like to turn her part-time teaching position at Otterbein College into a full-time professor job, but she can't afford the $47,000 to get a doctorate.
Even if she took on the debt, Herron said, she'd take a pay cut from her flight nurse and hospital jobs to teach full time.
"If I jumped to something secure like a professor at a college, I would take a pay cut of about $20,000 to $25,000," the Upper Arlington resident said.
The average annual salary of an entry-level nursing professor in Ohio is $50,000, according to a recent legislative study of nursing education. The same study found that assistant professors in physical therapy, for example, make an average of $76,120.
Getting more people to become nursing professors is the goal of a bill in the Ohio Senate.
Experts expect the country to be hit with a mass nursing shortage by 2020 because aging baby boomers will need more medical care and fewer nurses will be around to do the work. The average age of a nurse in the United States is about 50.
In Ohio, about 40 percent of the 153,310 nurses plan to leave the profession in the next 10 years, according to the state study.
The poor economy has boosted interest in nursing as a career, but most colleges have waiting lists because of the shortage of nursing instructors.
It took two years for Barbara Schaffner, chairwoman of the Otterbein nursing department, to fill one faculty position.
"It was difficult because the candidate pool is very low," she said. "I just filled it with a visiting professor because I haven't been able to find anyone on a permanent basis."
Ann Schiele, president of the Mount Carmel College of Nursing, has part-time openings and expects more in the fall. The college requires faculty members to have at least a master's degree and some teaching experience.
The Senate bill would direct the Ohio Board of Regents to encourage universities to share ideas about how to best recruit instructors and funnel more money to help pay for college for nurses wanting to teach.
Molly Anders is a nurse at Amherst Hospital and teaches part time at Lorain County Community College near Cleveland. She'd like to get her master's degree and teach full time.
"I would do it in a minute," said Anders, 31. "I just can't afford it. We have kids now."
The bill also would waive a requirement for advanced-practice nurses coming from other states to complete 500 hours of clinical supervisionunder a physician before being able to write prescriptions.
Because advanced nurses have master's degrees, this could be the quickest way to get more instructors.
"One faculty member could have a significant impact," said Jan Lanier, deputy executive officer of the Ohio Nurses Association. "They could take a class or a couple classes they couldn't before."
The bill doesn't address the pay of nursing-faculty members because, as Sen. Sue Morano pointed out, the legislature can't force schools to pay higher salaries.
The pay might be lower "because it's a predominantly female profession," said Morano, a Lorain Democrat and a registered nurse. "Nothing uncovers the reason why. It's just this is the way it is."
Even with lower salaries, better marketing could make the teaching profession more attractive by pointing out the scheduling benefits -- nights, weekends and holidays off and sometimes-long breaks between academic sessions, Morano and others said.
Discuss this story here: http://www.ultimatenurse.com/forum/f5/discuss-nursing-schools-36149/#post67313
Holly Herron knows she can't be a flight nurse forever.
Nearly 50 now, she won't always be able to jump out of a helicopter in a cornfield in the middle of the night or crawl into wrecked cars to get to patients.
She'd like to turn her part-time teaching position at Otterbein College into a full-time professor job, but she can't afford the $47,000 to get a doctorate.
Even if she took on the debt, Herron said, she'd take a pay cut from her flight nurse and hospital jobs to teach full time.
"If I jumped to something secure like a professor at a college, I would take a pay cut of about $20,000 to $25,000," the Upper Arlington resident said.
The average annual salary of an entry-level nursing professor in Ohio is $50,000, according to a recent legislative study of nursing education. The same study found that assistant professors in physical therapy, for example, make an average of $76,120.
Getting more people to become nursing professors is the goal of a bill in the Ohio Senate.
Experts expect the country to be hit with a mass nursing shortage by 2020 because aging baby boomers will need more medical care and fewer nurses will be around to do the work. The average age of a nurse in the United States is about 50.
In Ohio, about 40 percent of the 153,310 nurses plan to leave the profession in the next 10 years, according to the state study.
The poor economy has boosted interest in nursing as a career, but most colleges have waiting lists because of the shortage of nursing instructors.
It took two years for Barbara Schaffner, chairwoman of the Otterbein nursing department, to fill one faculty position.
"It was difficult because the candidate pool is very low," she said. "I just filled it with a visiting professor because I haven't been able to find anyone on a permanent basis."
Ann Schiele, president of the Mount Carmel College of Nursing, has part-time openings and expects more in the fall. The college requires faculty members to have at least a master's degree and some teaching experience.
The Senate bill would direct the Ohio Board of Regents to encourage universities to share ideas about how to best recruit instructors and funnel more money to help pay for college for nurses wanting to teach.
Molly Anders is a nurse at Amherst Hospital and teaches part time at Lorain County Community College near Cleveland. She'd like to get her master's degree and teach full time.
"I would do it in a minute," said Anders, 31. "I just can't afford it. We have kids now."
The bill also would waive a requirement for advanced-practice nurses coming from other states to complete 500 hours of clinical supervisionunder a physician before being able to write prescriptions.
Because advanced nurses have master's degrees, this could be the quickest way to get more instructors.
"One faculty member could have a significant impact," said Jan Lanier, deputy executive officer of the Ohio Nurses Association. "They could take a class or a couple classes they couldn't before."
The bill doesn't address the pay of nursing-faculty members because, as Sen. Sue Morano pointed out, the legislature can't force schools to pay higher salaries.
The pay might be lower "because it's a predominantly female profession," said Morano, a Lorain Democrat and a registered nurse. "Nothing uncovers the reason why. It's just this is the way it is."
Even with lower salaries, better marketing could make the teaching profession more attractive by pointing out the scheduling benefits -- nights, weekends and holidays off and sometimes-long breaks between academic sessions, Morano and others said.
Discuss this story here: http://www.ultimatenurse.com/forum/f5/discuss-nursing-schools-36149/#post67313