Why nursing schools are turning away applicants amid a major staffing shortage | CNN Business
Sadly, not new. One of the reasons that the UMass nursing program isn’t bigger is that there aren’t enough places for students to go for their clinicals. I assume that is the same for a lot of big flagships located in rural areas - there just aren’t enough hospitals and other medical facilities around to support the need.
2 Likes
Umass could use the dorm space at the campus they bought in newton, to give student nurses access to intensive clinical time. Plenty of sites in the boston area.
1 Like
That would make perfect sense. I know a lot of kids who were shut out of the UMass program which is a shame because it is fantastic nursing program at a great price for in-state kids.
From the article:
Blockquote
The national median salary for nursing school professors with master’s degrees is just under $89,000, according to the nursing college association. But the median salary for advanced practice registered nurses, who hold graduate degrees, is $120,000
Blockquote
That doesn’t describe a “staff shortage” but a pay shortage. The marketplace for those skills is substantially higher than what the schools are offering.
5 Likes
UMass Boston also has a nursing program. They should expand that instead of trying to cater to the Amherst campus.
Did they also apply to the UMass Boston nursing school?
That old Mt. Ida campus is in a great spot for access to metro Boston hospitals.
My son’s girlfriend was a volunteer firefighter before arriving at college. The nursing program wasn’t a direct admit major, and competition at the school was fierce. She chose to get a Health Sciences major instead, and became a practicing EMT, then Paramedic, then Duty Officer at the local volunteer rescue squad. Now she is finishing up a post-grad accelerated nursing program at a highly rated nursing school. She said her extensive experience working with actual trauma(gun shot wounds, motor vehicle entrapments, etc.) in the field gave her a major leg up in the program. She was the first members of her class to secure a job after graduation.
5 Likes
Not sure. I just know about the fact that a lot of prospective nurses have had to look elsewhere.
UMass Boston doesn’t have the dorm space - UMass Amherst now does. If UMass Amherst wanted to work it out with nursing students living at the Mt Ida campus dorms, doing clinicals in various sites around Boston, and doing classroom work on the Mt. Ida campus, it would be very possible. They’d probably have a bigger pool of potential nursing instructors in around Newton, too.
Haven’t read it but there was just a story on this topic on npr the other day. The expert they had on said they need more school capacity and they are trying but not keeping up with medical demands of an aging population.
A dorm building isn’t going to do anything for clinicals. They need practice partnerships with hospitals, and units with management and staff that are willing to take students.
In large cities, there are often multiple nursing programs all vying for clinical sites. I’m faculty in the Atlanta metro, and there are more than 20 nursing programs in the area.
Also, there is a faculty shortage. I believe we have 150+ open faculty positions in the state. 15 at my college alone.
they have 2000 beds in two new residence halls.
Nursing prof here. Lack of clinical sites and clinical instructors is a nationwide problem.
Imagine doing your job and having a student with you every day without anyone asking you if you are open to allowing someone to shadow you.
Would you take a job making $28/hr when you could make $45/hr somewhere else?
My salary was frozen for 3 years during covid. The rest of the university was working from home. I was in the hospitals with students. It was/is a huge slap in the face.
2 Likes
And you could have made triple that or more, travel nursing! Not to mention that the employer was probably getting massive federal pandemic money.
1 Like
We take nurses from countries where the training is virtually free, like nigeria and the philippines, leaving them lacking the staff they desperately need. Go look in our nursing homes, our hospitals, see who the nurses are. How can we not have the motivation and ability to train enough nurses here?
1 Like
And many leave bedside nursing within 2 years. It isn’t the lack of trained nurses in my opinion, it’s trained nurses not wanting to do the work asked for the pay given. Almost all of my students want to be NPs. They don’t stay nurses long. Sadly, NP pay is going down in many areas too.
1 Like
Many nurses want to go on to become nurse practitioners or nurse anesthetists. Some work for insurers, or become drug reps. Nurses have lots of options.
The pay for bedside nurses is good; many can earn over 100k what with shiftwork. I dont think the issue is low pay. Nurses get better pay than teachers, with more flexible hours and in some ways, less stress. I think the issue is that we have shut down our many community hospital based nursing programs, where lots of our older nurses were trained. There are simply not enough training slots, and those ambitious nurses who 40 years ago had only the MSN to teaching option to get ahead, now are able to choose various practitioner programs and do work that previously required an MD or DO.
2 Likes
I’d recommend reading The Nurses by Alexandra Robbins. It highlights a lot of the struggles that nurses face in the profession. One issue that is highlighted is the amount of violence/abuse that is inflicted on nurses by patients, family members, etc. Nurses are expected to endure this every day, which has gotten worse since COVID, and unfortunately, this type of violence is not taken seriously because “it’s part of the job”.
To be fair, I greatly respect nurses and know that there are good parts to their job, but it definitely is not for everyone.
It’s not for everyone- very true. It’s a tough job that’s for sure.
Some/many do want to be NPs now and they bypass bedside work by going to direct entry NP programs. It’s not always easy to find work as a NP without that bedside experience, as per some reports from recent grads.
And yes, NPs by me are doing work that MDs went to medical school for, but that’s a whole other discussion.
Our CC has a nursing program that is pretty competitive with a waitlist. Those grads probably do well.
1 Like