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Invest in nursing programs for our economic health
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
Raise your hand if you look forward to growing old. Just as I thought; I didn’t raise mine either.
Our concerns about old age are understandable. Aside from the obvious fact that growing old isn’t much fun (although, as Winston Churchill said, the alternative is worse), we’re facing a nursing shortage that should make the gray hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up.
Apparently, by the time many of us aging baby boomers pull out our walkers, the gap between nurse supply and nurse demand—in South Carolina and elsewhere in the nation—will be wider than the nation itself.
By 2012, the United States will need more than 1 million new and replacement nurses, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It would be nice if we started producing them before we boomers, who find ourselves chatting more and more about our health, slip into senility.
One problem fueling the nursing shortage is that nursing programs simply lack the capacity to train more nurses. The programs have only so many slots. Last year U.S. nursing programs turned away about 34,000 qualified nursing applicants because there wasn’t enough room for them.
Not only do the programs lack slots for would-be nurses, they lack the faculty.
Registered nurses can earn $15,000 to $20,000 a year more working in a clinic or hospital than teaching. Naturally, as the cost of living creeps ever upward, they go where the money is.
Another problem is that the very nature of nursing can be a strain on nurses, and many are suffering from burnout. Of course, what fuels the burnout is the lack of nurses. This forces existing nurses to work longer hours and carry heavier workloads.
In South Carolina, where obesity and diabetes run rampant, and where retiring baby boomers are arriving by the battalion, we need our state government to spend money to beef up our nursing programs.
Nursing faculty salaries need to be boosted to attract more instructors. Programs must be expanded to include more qualified nursing applicants.
And we can’t afford to whine about how much this will cost the taxpayer. It is an investment we need to make and should be an easy sell to taxpayers. All of us want someone there to care for us when we’re too old to care for ourselves.
Business leaders and economic developers should support this idea, not only for their personal health, but also for the economic health of the region.
Health care is part of the criterion companies use when considering to relocate or expand into another region. When we pitch “quality of life” in our marketing efforts to attract businesses, we mean (or should mean) more than golf courses and beaches. Health care is a vital component to quality of life, and nurses are vital to health care.
Then again, maybe the importance of nurses isn’t so obvious. If it were, we probably wouldn’t have a nursing shortage.
Higher-ups in the health care arena seem to focus more on new hospitals and clinics, doctors and the latest equipment, while nurses—the sergeants, if you will, that run the health care outfit—are an afterthought.
Before we build new health care facilities, we should make sure they will be sufficiently staffed. That’s a key to quality health care. Having the highest technology, the fanciest facility and the world’s best physicians do not automatically translate into top-notch health care. Somebody—usually a nurse—has to respond when the bed-ridden patient pushes the button.
About 98,000 patients die in U.S. hospitals each year, according to Gail Stuart, dean of the Medical University of South Carolina’s nursing school. Many of those deaths result from inferior patient care stemming from a lack of nurses.
Hospitals with more nurses have better patient care, Stuart noted.
That is why South Carolina needs to address our nursing shortage. Doing so is a hale and hearty prescription for our state’s economic well-being.
Dennis Quick is the senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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