By Susan Kreimer, MS, contributor
Feb. 26, 2010 - Holding out hope for health care reform, several of the nation’s nursing leaders convened at their own national forum in Houston on Monday, February 22, to discuss new solutions in education, training and recruitment. Their challenge is designing a blueprint to reform the profession, equipping nurses with the tools to implement a more effective and efficient health care system.
This was the third and final forum led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine. Participants explored what, how and where nursing schools should teach.
“Preparing the future nursing workforce to thrive in a complex health care system demands better-educated nurses,” said Fay Raines, Ph.D., RN, president of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Addressing NurseZone’s questions this week, she noted that “nurses with baccalaureate and higher degrees are well-prepared to meet the demands placed on today’s nurse.”
Encouraging all nurses to advance their education is an important step toward elevating patient safety, and nursing schools are seeking creative ways to attract and retain qualified faculty who can help meet this objective. Education leaders recognize that many nurses interested in teaching are deterred by the substantially lower salaries at colleges and universities in comparison with the clinical arena, Raines said.
As one solution, many schools “are offering joint appointments to expert nurses, which allows them to keep one foot in practice and one in academia,” she said. “These arrangements do work to supplement the salaries available to faculty without putting additional strains on the nursing academic unit, since a portion of the salary is paid by the practice site.”
Financial incentives such as loan forgiveness, repayment and scholarships ease the burden on nursing students who consent to obtain a graduate degree in exchange for a teaching commitment afterward. Schools also have started motivating capable students early in baccalaureate programs to complete advanced education at the outset of their nursing careers. More than 70 schools now offer BSN-to-doctoral programs to rapidly move students to the terminal nursing degree, Raines said.
If health care reform passes, nursing advocates expect a significant boost in education with the establishment of the Public Health Investment Fund and other means of monetary support. Even if reform comes to a grinding halt, there already have been major step-ups in federal funding for nursing education during the last two years, said Brenda Cleary, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, director of AARP’s Center to Champion Nursing in America.
Cleary praised the American Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included $500 million to address critical health care workforce shortages. About $200 million of this stimulus package was devoted to tackling the growing shortage of nurses and other primary care providers. An additional $250 million was allocated to the Department of Labor for competitive grants that will pay for job training and placement in high-growth sectors, with priority given to health care jobs.
The current health care reform proposals call for new models of chronic care delivery and more emphasis on wellness promotion and disease prevention. These shifts will demand that nurses possess the knowledge of research, centralized care coordination, outcomes management, risk assessment and quality improvement – the core content embedded in baccalaureate education, said Beverly Malone, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, chief executive officer of the National League for Nursing. But a systems approach, led by nurses with advanced degrees, will be necessary to address the disparities hindering equal access to health care for everyone.
“Schools are looking for new funding streams to remove financial barriers to graduate nursing education,” said Raines, who is also dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Business and practice partners are needed to fund scholarships, support outreach to middle and high school students, provide training space, raise money for faculty recruitment and stimulate ongoing nursing education.
“All stakeholders – including federal and state governments, the business community, foundations and advocacy groups – must take a larger role in addressing this crisis,” she said.
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