Older nurses retiring in droves, creating shortages

We are getting old. This is causing a problem across the country in the field of nursing.

Specifically, the problem is a national shortage of nurses in the labor market, and the main reason for this is age: the age of nurses, the age of patients and the age of educators.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported health-care occupations are expected to have 16 percent growth between 2014 and 2024, which is much faster than the average for all other occupations.

The bureau identified the major reasons for this growth as an increased emphasis on preventive care, growing rates of chronic conditions and demand for health-care services from the baby-boom population. But there seems to be more to it.

“Nursing shortages are cyclic,” said B.J. Whiffen, dean of nursing at Southeast Hospital College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “I’ve been a nurse for 31 years, and I’ve seen it many times. But this one is a little different.”

The baby-boomer generation is aging, Whiffen said. The nurses of that generation are retiring in droves, and boomers in general are living longer, thanks to improved health care, although they still have health problems.

“So we’re going to have a bunch of nurses who started in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s who are going to retire right around the time we’re going to have a surge of elderly people who are going to need care,” Whiffen said.

Judy Aslin, vice president and chief nursing officer at Southeast Hospital, has seen a loss particularly in critical-care nurses.

“We have seen this coming with our staff, as they come to the end of their nursing careers,” she said.

Gloria Green, chairwoman of the department of nursing at Southeast Missouri State University, identifies the aging of nursing faculty as a critical issue as well.

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses reported U.S. nursing schools turned away 79,659 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2012 because of an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors and budget constraints.

Green said this trend is found here.

“I have folks retiring just about every year,” she said.

“We need more nursing educators. A lot of our nursing professors are getting older. We need good, educated master’s- or doctorally prepared educators,” Whiffen said.

There are several positions in health care in demand. According to the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, three health-care services — registered nurses, nurse aides and home health aides — fill spots in the 20 jobs with the highest potential for growth in the field.

The nature of nurse education offers opportunities for those interested in patient care, and those in the field often find themselves working their way up.

Plus many of them have openings available, as indicated by the MERIC study,

“Nursing is a unique field in that there are many levels. You can be a certified nurse assistant (CNA) and get your feet wet and see if you like patient care. CNAs do basic patient care. LPN [licensed practical nursing] is the next level,” said Libby Guilliams, assistant director for postsecondary education at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center.

Guilliams often advises new students to begin as CNA or LPN, then progress over time.

Students can go to LPN school for a year and leave with skills that will give them a job that pays better than minimum wage.

“Then, when life allows you to make that next step to the LPN to RN [registered nurse] bridge,” Guilliams said. “And then, if you want to, you can go RN to BSN [bachelor of science in nursing] bridge. But at any level you have a license, a credential and a skill.”

“It can be confusing for people who want to go into it,” Whiffen said.

But at any level, it can be difficult to get into a program.

The Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center’s LPN program has a waiting list every year, as does Southeast Missouri State’s BSN program.

“We have more applicants than we can accept right now,” Green said. “For us, that’s a good thing, but that does mean that there are qualified students that are not able to get in.”

Small class sizes can keep programs competitive. But in some cases, it is simply a lack of educators available.

Southeast Hospital College of Nursing and Health Science has a two-year waiting list for its program.

“We admit 40 students every semester, and that’s about as much room and faculty as we can handle,” Whiffen said.

Starting salaries for the different positions can vary depending on the specializations and locations, but Guilliams said CNAs tend to make $8 to 10 an hour, while LPNs make $11 to 15.

According to the labor bureau, the hourly mean wage for registered nurses in Missouri is $27.90.

To improve nurse staffing, many facilities are ramping up efforts to bring in qualified applicants.

“Right now with the shortage, I think salaries are probably going up, and they’re also offering bonuses,” Guilliams said.

“We’ve increased the sign-on bonus for our critical-care experienced nurses, and we also offer comprehensive training for those graduate nurses who want to become critical-care nurses, so there’s a lot of class time they would get in addition to the hands-on training that they would get in the units,” Aslin said.

To offset the shortage, efforts to increase the workforce in nursing and nursing education must begin early.

“One of the keys is talking to the young people early,” said Whiffen, who suggested outreach should begin even before high school.

There are many areas of nursing that don’t necessarily involve patient care — research and coding, for example — and awareness needs to be raised so interest in nursing fields can pique early.

“This shortage is going to last a while,” Whiffen said.

bbrown@semissourian.com

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