Any thoughts or comments on this? Studies: Rebirth of nursing shortage awaits Florida when recession ends » Naples Daily News

The recession isn’t wreaking havoc on the nursing profession in Florida but that will change once the economy is back on solid footing.

That’s the strange-but-true finding from two recent studies in Florida that examined the current status of nurse education programs, on the one hand, and the employment environment.

The recession has eased the state’s nursing shortage in the short term but it will return with a vengeance once the economy recovers, according to the Florida Center for Nursing, established by the state Legislature in 2001 to collect nursing data and address workforce issues.

“The economic recession is kind of a blip but we have to stay focused on the long-term prize,” said Jennifer Nooney, the center’s associate director of research.

The long-term prize is overcoming the longstanding nursing shortage with permanent solutions.

The bottom line is today’s nurse workforce is still aging and Florida’s general population is still aging, something state leaders recognized years ago as a disaster in the making. The health-care industry, educational community and state policy-makers must come up with viable solutions, according to the nursing center, based at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

“Resolving Florida’s nursing shortage will require a multi-pronged approach, including interventions to increase the production of new nurses, improve the work environment to retain existing nurses, and redesign work to accommodate the older nurses,” according to the center.

There were 6,800 vacancies in Florida for registered nurses in June 2009, a sizable drop from 10,400 vacancies in June 2007, according to the nursing center. With respect to licensed practical nurses, there were 1,400 vacancies in June 2009, fewer than half of the 3,000 vacancies in June 2007.

Openings are greatest at nursing homes, hospices and home-health agencies, the center found.

Thirty-five percent of hospitals reported needing registered nurses, which more likely reflects budgets not keeping up with need, the center found.

Moreover, hospitals don’t anticipate growth in new positions until after 2011.

In Southwest Florida, hospital officials say their nursing vacancies have eased during the recession because nurses delayed retiring or moving on due to income needs or inability to sell their homes, said Mike Polito, with workforce development and planning for the Lee Memorial Health System in Lee County.

“I think it’s really going to be short-lived,” he said, referring to the drop in vacancies. “There needs to be something on the government side to help with the nursing shortage because it’s long-term; a 10-year projection is a million nurse shortage by 2020 nationwide. That hasn’t changed.”

At present, Lee Memorial has 124 openings for registered nurses and more than 200 new nursing graduates have applied for Lee Memorial’s internship program that provides more specialized training needed to gain experience, said Karen Krieger, Lee Memorial spokeswoman.

The vacancy rate last December for bedside registered nurses was 5.5 percent, slightly different from 5.1 percent two years ago.

“We anticipate hiring 160 interns,” Krieger said. “I know we actively recruit nurses across the nation and we have a pool of internal nurses who we can pull from.”

Polito said Lee Memorial’s network with nursing schools at Edison State College, Florida Gulf Coast University and Nova University has been a big help to fill the need.

“This community is in very good shape compared to other places in Florida,” he said.

At the NCH Healthcare System in Collier, the registered nurse vacancy rate is 8.8 percent, with 105 openings and 1,184 budgeted positions.

For certain, some nurses at NCH who were nearing retirement or who were considering going part-time opted not to because of the recession when their husbands lost jobs, said Michele Thoman, NCH’s chief nursing officer.

When the economy improves again, many of them may retire or go part time.

“I definitely believe a lot of focused attention needs to go to universities and colleges,” Thoman said, referring to combating the nurse shortage.

“There is a grave concern there’s not enough feeding the pipeline.”

The catch is that the pay structure for faculty nurses can’t compete with salaries for practicing nurses, and that means few nurses are interested in getting their master’s degree to teach, she said.

NCH has partnered with Edison College for newly trained nurses and offers tuition assistance for current NCH employees who want a career change and to non-employees in exchange for a work commitment after graduation. On average, Edison graduates 25 nurses every December and May -- many of whom come to NCH to work, she said.

Just recently, she met with officials from Barry University outside of Miami about Barry nursing students potentially getting some of their clinical training at NCH, a sign of the need for clinical training sites and educators, she said. Nothing has been decided yet, she added.