Although most people have heard about the nursing shortage, there’s another shortage brewing – a dearth of nursing faculty to teach students to be nurses.
Now, UNMC and its hospital partner, The Nebraska Medical Center, are teaming up to help resolve the shortage in both fields.
The Nebraska Medical Center has agreed to provide $25,000 a year to the UNMC College of Nursing to supplement salaries of several new faculty recruits — faculty that will teach nursing students and practice nursing.
“If you don’t have enough faculty to teach, you can’t take as many students,” said Catherine Todero, Ph.D., associate dean and associate professor in UNMC’s College of Nursing. “This has been the problem nationwide. People in the health care business are turning to us and saying, ‘Why can’t you take more students?’ The consequence is the nursing shortage becomes more severe.”
Dr. Todero said the faculty shortage is starting to gain momentum nationally with faculty fellowships and national loan programs. “People are realizing the long-term consequences of the faculty shortage,” Dr. Todero said. “It’s all part of the big picture. Faculty sometimes stretch how many students they have in a group, but there’s only so many students you can supervise.”
She said the more faculty members a college has, the more students it can teach, graduate and get into health care settings.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) recently released preliminary survey data that show enrollment in entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs increased by 13 percent from 2004 to 2005. Though this increase is welcome, surveyed nursing colleges and universities denied 32,617 qualified applications primarily due to a shortage of nurse educators.
One of the issues of faculty shortages is pay. “Last year, we tried to hire people but could not, or lost some faculty because our salaries cannot compete with salaries that these practicing nurses can command,” Dr. Todero said.
She said about half of the college’s academic faculty – those who teach and supervise students in clinic – are on nine-month contracts. “We’re competing with salaries that pay 12 months,” Dr. Todero said. “One solution is to find supplementary salary for the summer months so we can keep them year-round.”
In general, nursing faculty work for 25 percent less pay than their colleagues who practice in clinics, she said.
“Faculty salaries haven’t kept pace with that of clinical salaries,” Dr. Todero said. “We require a master’s degree – ideally a doctorate — to teach nursing in college. The nurses with master’s degrees can pull down $70,000 or $80,000 a year.
“We have been struggling with this and with retaining faculty once we recruit them. We thought if could offer pay and work in the summer, we might have some success.”
Glenn Fosdick, chief executive officer of The Nebraska Medical Center, Rita Van Fleet, chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services, and Virginia Tilden, D.N.Sc., dean of the UNMC College of Nursing, met to talk about how to improve faculty recruiting. The hospital allocated $25,000 a year to supplement three months of salary for several newly recruited faculty members.
“If hospitals are going to have any chance of addressing the nursing shortage, they have to address the faculty shortage,” Fosdick said. “I think it’s the responsibility of hospitals to take the initiative on this. It’s a continuation of the partnership between the hospital and UNMC.”
Though the program will initially apply in Omaha, officials will evaluate similar ways to increase faculty in its Lincoln, Kearney and Scottsbluff divisions.
“The model will allow the new faculty to work for the college nine months and the hospital three months, or it could be an 80/20 partnership. The hospital is very flexible about helping us,” Dr. Tilden said.
Faculty recruited with the monies could serve three months in the hospital in a variety of roles, including providing health services.
In Omaha, Dr. Todero said the college is short about five faculty positions. The college traditionally has relied on the help of graduate assistants – nurses working on master’s degrees in nursing – to help its faculty teach and supervise nursing students in clinics. “We couldn’t run our programs without graduate assistants,” she said.
Though a master’s degree in nursing is required to teach nursing, faculty candidates do not have to have teaching experience to be hired. Dr. Todero said they will be mentored and given assistance in teaching and can take the college’s teaching courses for free.
On average, the faculty to student ratio is one-to-eight for sophomore and junior nursing students and one-to-10 for senior nursing students.
The college recently instituted its bachelor’s degree in nursing to doctoral degree fast track program aimed at creating more educators. “The shortage is such we can’t just hire those who are doctorally prepared,” Dr. Todero said. “We can hire them if we can find them 12 months of work and pay.”
She said the typical reasons that attract nurses to teach include a love of teaching and the flexible nine-month work schedule, especially if they are raising children.
For more information about teaching nursing, call LaDonna Tworek at (402) 559-4109.