National & International

Metro & State

| Birmingham -- Scores of young nurses learn their IVs from their catheters each year at the University of Alabama at Birmingham hospital. But UAB�s nursing school has turned away nearly 100 qualified applicants in the last year because it didn�t have the people to teach them. Associate Dean Elizabeth Stullenbarger co-chairs a regional committee that surveys nursing faculty vacancies.

�What we found is quite alarming. That there are approximately 500 to 600 nursing faculty who are leaving faculty positions either through retirements and resignations each year. Each year!�

And that�s just in the southern region. Nationwide the vacancy numbers are staggering and it�s only getting worse. More than half of all current nursing faculty are eligible for retirement in the next five years and younger nurses and nursing students aren�t stepping up to fill their ranks.

�It�s not as glamorous.�

Barbara Woodring is associate dean for graduate education at UAB�s nursing school and President of the National Society of Pediatric Nurses.

�The word professor doesn�t carry with it the same kind of aura that does a practicing nurse in an emergency room.�

But it�s not just the lack of glitz that dissuades many young nursing students from going into academe. A nursing faculty member with a PhD can expect to earn about $50,000 a year. Compare that to the $75,000 a nurse with a master�s degree can get at a hospital. It�s a no-brainer says nursing student Erin Rigney, especially for students who have student loans to pay.

�You know, money is an issue for them. It�s an issue for them whether or not this hospital is going to pay them this or this hospital is going to pay them that.�

�We are out there competing with them, we just don�t compete very well!�

Again, UAB�s Barbara Woodring.

�I last year attempted to hire a doctoral faculty � just out of her doctor program. My salary maximum that I could offer to her was tripled by a competing for-profit hospital who hired her as a vice president of patient services.�

And tight state budgets mean no raises for many state employees, including nursing faculty as UAB. The nursing faculty shortage isn�t purely an academic concern. It trickles down to patient care as well. Faculty members must supervise student nurses treating hospital patients. With the shortages, faculty members often find themselves juggling 8 students with two patients each. That�s 16 medical histories, medication charts, and other treatment regimes. Nursing student Erin Rigney says it can spread a faculty member pretty thin.

�When I first started out it was difficult because you�d be like, where is she? This med has to be give at this time! And she has to come with me!�

Nursing school administrators worry that with such high student-teacher ratios they�ll graduate nurses who can�t pass the licensing exams and therefore won�t be able to practice. UAB nursing school administrators says it�s a frustrating circle, say UAB�s administrators. There aren�t enough faculty to teach nursing students� but if they can�t graduate enough nursing students they won�t have a pool from which to draw new faculty members. There are some efforts underway to address the problem, including debt forgiveness for nursing faculty and quicker doctoral programs� but these may only be band-aid solutions for a much bigger problem.

~Tanya Ott, March 17, 2004