The Need for Nurses: Schools Expand Enrollments, but Shortages Are Expected to Persist
By Alison Damast, The Stamford Advocate, Conn.
Jan. 8–Terri Condon had jitters when she first considered becoming a nurse in 2001.
She was in her late 40s and worried that her age, coupled with her lack of a science background, would make her an unlikely candidate.
“In the beginning, I thought I must be crazy. Why am I doing this?” said Condon, a Stamford resident who just turned 50.
But she put her fears aside, inspired by the experience of caring for her mother, who died of lung cancer a decade ago.
She signed up for evening science classes while working full time in the customer service department at Arch Corp. in Norwalk.
Condon will graduate from Norwalk Community College this spring with an associate’s degree in nursing. She is one of about 50 nursing students graduating this year — the largest class in NCC’s history.
The number of nursing program graduates statewide has jumped in the past few years, fueled by a projected shortage of nurses and an increased demand, health and education officials said.
Students such as Condon, originally placed on a waiting list at NCC, are finding it easier to break into the profession.
“It is really the deans and directors who run these programs who have made it a priority to admit as many of those people on the waiting list as possible,” said Marcia Proto, executive director of the Connecticut League for Nursing. “They have done a phenomenal job to maximize their resources within their schools and have really advocated internally for program expansion.”
A report released last week by the state Department of Higher Education showed a 25 percent increase in the number of students earning nursing degrees last year.
Despite the spike in students, the 1,076 nursing degrees conferred is short of the 1,081 nursing job openings projected by the state Department of Labor this year. And it will get worse, health officials said.
By 2012, the state will be short about 6,000 registered nurses, according to labor department projections.
The increase in nursing graduates last year is encouraging, but the state must continue working with schools, state Higher Education Commissioner Valerie Lewis said. Many nurses who are part of the baby-boomer generation are set to retire soon, Lewis said.
“It is hard to say whether meeting the current number is enough,” Lewis said. “The likelihood is that we are going to need more in the future.”
To meet the demand, nursing programs such as the one at NCC are working with hospitals.
For example, nursing schools often can’t expand because it is difficult to recruit and pay professors, said Mary Schuler, director of NCC’s Nursing and Allied Health Program. Last year, Stamford Hospital, Norwalk Hospital and Greenwich Hospital each gave NCC $75,000 to help pay for three additional teaching positions.
Even with that help, NCC has to turn away many prospective nursing students, Schuler said.
The two-year program typically receives 300 applications a year, but has room for 140 students, Schuler said. That’s significantly more than 2003, when NCC accepted only 60 students for nursing.
“The hospitals are extremely supportive of our expansion,” Schuler said. “They will be needing nurses in the future, obviously, so that is why they want to have a group of graduates who are from the geographic area. The students coming into NCC are from these communities, so they know that they will stay here and work here.”
Virginia Peyton, a respiratory therapist who works at Norwalk Hospital, will graduate from NCC this year.
She said she is not surprised there is a nursing shortage: The work is draining and there are only a few spots at nursing schools.
“It’s a very tough program, so even of the people who start out, only half make it at the end,” she said.
Condon, who is working part time as a medical assistant at Physicians for Women’s Health in Stamford and plans to become an OB-GYN nurse, said she has similar sentiments.
“I think there a lot of people going into it, but I guess there are a lot of people who have gotten burnt out,” Condon said.
Nursing vacancy rates at area hospitals were 5 percent to 10 percent last year, with open positions filled by part-time and per-diem employees.
Stamford Hospital had an average nurse vacancy rate of 8.5 percent, with a low of 5 percent for 2006, hospital officials said. Norwalk Hospital has a vacancy rate of 5 percent to 6 percent; Greenwich Hospital has a 7 percent rate, officials said.
Hospitals are devising plans to ensure they have a stream of recruits each year, and are working to retain the nurses they have, said Pat Grant, Greenwich Hospital’s senior vice president of patient care services. They have begun offering nurses flexible hours, shift differentials and opportunities for further education.
Working with schools such as NCC and Fairfield University is vital, Grant said.
“There probably aren’t enough educators right now and that is why we are trying to partner with these schools to see how we can share some faculty,” Grant said. “I think that really a key strategy is for hospitals and nursing schools to come together with some innovative model to see how we can help fill that void.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Stamford Advocate, Conn.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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