More on the on-going story. This is from Indiana: Nursing students turned away amid faculty shortage - WTHR
Amid a looming shortage of nurses nationwide, Indiana nursing programs rejected about 2,500 qualified applicants because the schools didn't have the full-time faculty needed to teach them, a survey found.
The 2008 survey by the Indiana Nursing Workforce Development Coalition said faculty shortages prevent nursing programs from maintaining a supply of qualified applicants.
Schools are trying to graduate as many nurses as possible because a shortage of 260,000 nurses is projected by 2025, The Times of Munster reported Sunday. An additional 30,000 nurses need to graduate each year to meet the nation's health care needs, according to the Council on Physician and Nurse Supply.
"We need more nurses out there," said Lisa Rhodes, 37, who is a nurse practitioner for Hammond Clinic in St. John and an adjunct clinical professor at Purdue University Calumet's School of Nursing.
About half of Indiana's nursing faculty, including Rhodes, work part time as adjunct faculty while they maintain jobs as nurses. Indiana University Northwest and Purdue-Calumet have been able to buck the trend and increase enrollment in recent years due largely to the hiring of part-time faculty.
But the schools need more nurses who are able to teach full time.
"It impacts the quality of our programs and our accreditation status," said Peggy Gerard, dean of nursing at Purdue-Calumet.
Nurses who are qualified to teach full time must have doctoral degrees, and nurses with doctorates are getting harder to find, said Linda Rooda, dean of IU-Northwest's School of Nursing.
"The faculty shortage is probably the greatest issue of all," she said. "It's basically due to an aging population of nursing faculty and difficulty attracting young potential faculty into academia."
IU-Northwest has been looking for candidates to fill a full-time faculty position since November, while it hired at least three adjunct faculty last year.
Pay is one obstacle. A registered nurse earns an average salary of $65,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. An assistant nursing professor with a master's degree earns about $50,000, while a professor with a doctoral degree earns about $74,000.
And nurses who do earn higher degrees have more medical career choices, Rooda said, including technology-based positions created by the digitization of patient records.
The problem isn't going to get better soon. According to the state nursing coalition, the average age of Indiana's full-time nursing faculty is 51, and in the next 10 years, more than half of those will have reached the retirement age of 65.
Amid a looming shortage of nurses nationwide, Indiana nursing programs rejected about 2,500 qualified applicants because the schools didn't have the full-time faculty needed to teach them, a survey found.
The 2008 survey by the Indiana Nursing Workforce Development Coalition said faculty shortages prevent nursing programs from maintaining a supply of qualified applicants.
Schools are trying to graduate as many nurses as possible because a shortage of 260,000 nurses is projected by 2025, The Times of Munster reported Sunday. An additional 30,000 nurses need to graduate each year to meet the nation's health care needs, according to the Council on Physician and Nurse Supply.
"We need more nurses out there," said Lisa Rhodes, 37, who is a nurse practitioner for Hammond Clinic in St. John and an adjunct clinical professor at Purdue University Calumet's School of Nursing.
About half of Indiana's nursing faculty, including Rhodes, work part time as adjunct faculty while they maintain jobs as nurses. Indiana University Northwest and Purdue-Calumet have been able to buck the trend and increase enrollment in recent years due largely to the hiring of part-time faculty.
But the schools need more nurses who are able to teach full time.
"It impacts the quality of our programs and our accreditation status," said Peggy Gerard, dean of nursing at Purdue-Calumet.
Nurses who are qualified to teach full time must have doctoral degrees, and nurses with doctorates are getting harder to find, said Linda Rooda, dean of IU-Northwest's School of Nursing.
"The faculty shortage is probably the greatest issue of all," she said. "It's basically due to an aging population of nursing faculty and difficulty attracting young potential faculty into academia."
IU-Northwest has been looking for candidates to fill a full-time faculty position since November, while it hired at least three adjunct faculty last year.
Pay is one obstacle. A registered nurse earns an average salary of $65,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. An assistant nursing professor with a master's degree earns about $50,000, while a professor with a doctoral degree earns about $74,000.
And nurses who do earn higher degrees have more medical career choices, Rooda said, including technology-based positions created by the digitization of patient records.
The problem isn't going to get better soon. According to the state nursing coalition, the average age of Indiana's full-time nursing faculty is 51, and in the next 10 years, more than half of those will have reached the retirement age of 65.