May 16, 2006

Nurses Deserving of Our Thanks

COLUMBUS , OH - Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-Upper Arlington) today submitted the following editorial:

This past week America celebrated National Nurses Week, a week in which we honor the millions of men and women who serve the front lines of our nation's health care system.  In 1982, Congress established May 12th as National Recognition for Nurses Day in conjunction with the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, and in 1993 the American Nurses Association expanded the recognition to a week long observance of the important role nurses play.

Nurses serve in one of the most intellectually challenging, physically demanding, emotionally draining, and underappreciated sectors of our society.  The nurse is the face of health care, and must be as skillful as they are compassionate during a time of significant stress and uncertainty for most of their patients.  The nurse you meet is uniquely committed to health care and has chosen this career path for purely benevolent reasons, as the educational requirements are difficult and lengthy, the hours brutal, and the pay less than lavish.

One of the most significant issue facing nurses today is a numbers crunch.  According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), registered nurses top the list of the ten occupations with the largest projected job growth in the years 2002-2012.  According to the 2002 BLS report, more than 2.9 million RNs will be employed in the year 2012, up 623,000 from the nearly 2.3 million RNs employed in 2002.  However, the total job openings, which include both job growth and the net replacement of nurses, will be more than 1.1 million. This growth, coupled with current trends of nurses retiring or leaving the profession and fewer new nurses entering it, could lead to a shortage of more than one million nurses by the end of this decade.

Compounding the problem is that most nursing schools lack the capacity to handle the glut of people wishing to enroll.  A 2002 report by the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce found that of 1,688 nursing school applicants, 970 were turned away because the schools lacked the capacity.  Health care has a monstrous economic impact of $4 billion in Franklin County, and will continue to grow as a result of hospital system expansion and increasing demand for healthcare services.  Thus, the need to address our nursing shortage has reached a critical mass.

As area hospitals and development leaders work vigorously to combat this shortage, I am proud to have teamed up with local partners in our area to put in place some concrete solutions.  Recently, I was able to secure $450,000 in federal funds for the Columbus Healthcare Workforce Center, a public/private partnership created by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce to ensure our area's health care needs are met.  The funding supports the five nursing colleges and universities in Columbus, and in the short-and long-term should dramatically impact the retention and graduation rates, and the quality of nurse graduates in our area. 

Specifically, this federal money is being used to institute a retention specialist to assist with tutoring students in Baccalaureate programs that have freshman enrollments, increasing retention rates by 85% from the freshman to the sophomore year, and by 40% from the sophomore to the junior year.  It will also seek to expand the nursing class size of three of our five local colleges by 20%, adding 140 new nursing students each year.  Finally, the money will update clinical laboratories with equipment such as pediatric simulators, a neonatal simulator, and critical care towers, which will greatly enhance the ability of our education institutions to develop critical thinking skills in our nursing workforce, as well combat the 30% increase in chronic care needs predicted nationwide.

In recognition of Nurses Week, take it upon yourself to thank one.  They are the compassionate, committed, and capable mainstay of our health care system, and are quite deserving of our expressed gratitude.