Amherst, N.Y. (WBEN) - This week is National Nurses Week, and while we as a community take the time to thank our healthcare providers, we must keep in mind a prevalent issue that has been exacerbated coming out of the pandemic: A shortage of nurses.
Annette Wysocki, University at Buffalo's School of Nursing Dean tells WBEN that there are a number of causes that have resulted in the shortage.
"[There was] a massive wave of resignations following the end of the pandemic and then we also have an aging workforce," Wysocki noted.
Couple these concerns with the most recent data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing which shows that over 91,000 qualified applicants for baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs were turned away because of the shortage of faculty, clinical sites, insufficient classroom space as well as clinical preceptors and budget constraints, and we have a problem that may not fix itself.
Wysocki notes that it's difficult to recruit nursing educators, who opt to make more money elsewhere. Nurses can earn higher salaries employed in hospitals, corporations, and the military compared to school faculty.
"It's difficult to recruit them because they can make more money as a clinician than they can make on the faculty. So that has also been a real difficulty for us, trying to recruit the faculty of the future when we can't compete with the salaries," Wysocki said.
With the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicting a need for 203,200 new registered nurses each year through 2031 factoring in the retirement of 1 million nurses and workforce turnover and New York State not graduating enough students to meet demand - what do you do?
Wysocki suggests a number of strategies, starting with providing scholarships for doctoral students.
"Typically what happens is that for people that want to aspire to be a faculty member, they're trying to continue to work and they're trying to continue to go to school to make that possible, but then it really delays or prolong their path through becoming a faculty member. I think it's important to be able to offset that," she said.
Wysocki also thinks allowing for a tuition differential for professional students would make sense.
"There should be a tuition differential for nurses as licensed professional practitioners as much as there's a large tuition differential for medical students and dental students as well, just because the cost of educating health care professionals is much higher than it used to be," Wysocki said.
Lastly, Wysocki thinks endowed professor positions are something that could work if there was financial backing to do so.
"We don't have any endowed professorships that could help us cover that salary differential. I think most people understand there might be a pay cut, but too much of a pay cut, then they're not willing to make that change. So I think having some endowed positions in any school of nursing would be enormously helpful," she said.