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The next shortage—The nurse educator
FROM O U R COLU
NI[ST8
Pubfic Poficy The Next Shortage T r E N T I O N HAS BEEN FOCUSED on the shortage of bedside nursing. The US government has intervened with the establishment of a national commission to study the problem. The Secretary's Commission on Nursing has made its report with strategies for alleviating the shortage. * Declining enrollment of new entrants into nursing have alarmed both caregivers and consumers. The increasing demand for nursing care has been labeled as the cause for the imbalance. Efforts by foundations to stimulate the reorganization of the practice environment have been implemented. 2 Service settings have begun to reexamine the deployment of the nurse work force. Efforts by nursing schools to relieve the shortage have focused on recruitment. Image campaigns have portrayed nursing as an attractive career. Deans rejoice as their most recent enrollment figures show an increase rather than the declines of recent years but they speak cautiously of the encouraging trend of increased applicants. Yet, as annual admissions show a slight increase (.79 per cent) 3 from '87-'88 to '88-'89, another shortage begins to surface: the shortage of nurse educators. Minnick and Young, 4 studying Illinois nurses renewing licenses in 1986, first predicted a shortage of nurse educators to evidence in the mid-1990s. Their most recent (1988) study 5 confirms this prediction. The 1988 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services Division of Nursing, reports 30,005 nurses (1.8 per cent) actively employed as nurse educators in 1988 compared with 40,311 (2.7 per cent) in 1984. 6'7 The number of nurse educators declined by .9 percentage points with a total decline of 30 per cent. The total nurse population increased by 10 per cent. According to the National Sample Survey, baccalaureate or higher degree programs accounted for the decline while licensed practical nurse/ CONNIE FLYNT MULLINIX, MBA, M P H , R N
Clinical Assistant Professor School of Nursing Un£,rsity of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460 © 1990 by W.B. Saunders Company. 8755-7223/90/0603-000153.00/0
The Nurse Educator licensed vocational nurse, diploma, associate degree, and other nurse education programs evidenced gains in the number of nurse educators employed. Rising nurse salaries in practice settings have attracted potentially new nurse educators into nursing service. A PhD heading a hospital's nurse education and research department is no longer an oddity. Other health-related research efforts have attracted the versatile masters'-prepared or doctorally prepared nurse to conduct or manage research involving patients. Likewise, continuing education efforts housed outside schools of nursing have hired nurse educators. The doctorally prepared nurse, in years past, was employed exclusively by schools of nursing, where both education and research were accomplished. The PhD nurses's options for employment now extend beyond schools of nursing. As nursing looks forward to providing care for an increasingly chronically ill, dependent population with greater demands for nursing care, will the educators be available to prepare future generations of nurses? If the early predictions of a shortage of nurse educators prove to be true, can nursing with its own free market 'devices attract qualified nurses to teach futUre nurses? Or, must government again be called on to ~timulate nurses to teach nursing?
References 1. Secretary's Commission on Nursing: Final Report. Washington, DC, Office of the Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services, 1988. 2. AmericanJournal of Nursing Staff: Million dollar remodeling. AJN 89:1429, 1989 (based on news release) 3. National League for Nursing: Unpublished data, 1989 4. Minnick A, Young W: Unpublished data, 1986 5. Minnick A, Young W: Unpublished data, 1988 6. US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Health Professions, Division of Nursing: The Registered Nurse Population, Findings from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, November 1984. Springfield. VA, NTIS, 1986. 7. Moses E: Data from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, March 1988. Washington, DC, DHHS, HRSA, BHP, Division of Nursing, 1989
Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 6, N o 3 (May-June), 1990: p 133
133
NI[ST8
Pubfic Poficy The Next Shortage T r E N T I O N HAS BEEN FOCUSED on the shortage of bedside nursing. The US government has intervened with the establishment of a national commission to study the problem. The Secretary's Commission on Nursing has made its report with strategies for alleviating the shortage. * Declining enrollment of new entrants into nursing have alarmed both caregivers and consumers. The increasing demand for nursing care has been labeled as the cause for the imbalance. Efforts by foundations to stimulate the reorganization of the practice environment have been implemented. 2 Service settings have begun to reexamine the deployment of the nurse work force. Efforts by nursing schools to relieve the shortage have focused on recruitment. Image campaigns have portrayed nursing as an attractive career. Deans rejoice as their most recent enrollment figures show an increase rather than the declines of recent years but they speak cautiously of the encouraging trend of increased applicants. Yet, as annual admissions show a slight increase (.79 per cent) 3 from '87-'88 to '88-'89, another shortage begins to surface: the shortage of nurse educators. Minnick and Young, 4 studying Illinois nurses renewing licenses in 1986, first predicted a shortage of nurse educators to evidence in the mid-1990s. Their most recent (1988) study 5 confirms this prediction. The 1988 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, conducted by the US Department of Health and Human Services Division of Nursing, reports 30,005 nurses (1.8 per cent) actively employed as nurse educators in 1988 compared with 40,311 (2.7 per cent) in 1984. 6'7 The number of nurse educators declined by .9 percentage points with a total decline of 30 per cent. The total nurse population increased by 10 per cent. According to the National Sample Survey, baccalaureate or higher degree programs accounted for the decline while licensed practical nurse/ CONNIE FLYNT MULLINIX, MBA, M P H , R N
Clinical Assistant Professor School of Nursing Un£,rsity of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460 © 1990 by W.B. Saunders Company. 8755-7223/90/0603-000153.00/0
The Nurse Educator licensed vocational nurse, diploma, associate degree, and other nurse education programs evidenced gains in the number of nurse educators employed. Rising nurse salaries in practice settings have attracted potentially new nurse educators into nursing service. A PhD heading a hospital's nurse education and research department is no longer an oddity. Other health-related research efforts have attracted the versatile masters'-prepared or doctorally prepared nurse to conduct or manage research involving patients. Likewise, continuing education efforts housed outside schools of nursing have hired nurse educators. The doctorally prepared nurse, in years past, was employed exclusively by schools of nursing, where both education and research were accomplished. The PhD nurses's options for employment now extend beyond schools of nursing. As nursing looks forward to providing care for an increasingly chronically ill, dependent population with greater demands for nursing care, will the educators be available to prepare future generations of nurses? If the early predictions of a shortage of nurse educators prove to be true, can nursing with its own free market 'devices attract qualified nurses to teach futUre nurses? Or, must government again be called on to ~timulate nurses to teach nursing?
References 1. Secretary's Commission on Nursing: Final Report. Washington, DC, Office of the Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services, 1988. 2. AmericanJournal of Nursing Staff: Million dollar remodeling. AJN 89:1429, 1989 (based on news release) 3. National League for Nursing: Unpublished data, 1989 4. Minnick A, Young W: Unpublished data, 1986 5. Minnick A, Young W: Unpublished data, 1988 6. US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Health Professions, Division of Nursing: The Registered Nurse Population, Findings from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, November 1984. Springfield. VA, NTIS, 1986. 7. Moses E: Data from the National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, March 1988. Washington, DC, DHHS, HRSA, BHP, Division of Nursing, 1989
Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 6, N o 3 (May-June), 1990: p 133
133