Funds needed to train nurses

TOPEKA — While clinics and hospitals clamor for more nurses, so do nursing education programs.

Prompted by a projected nursing shortage, the Kansas Legislature in 2006 awarded $30 million in grants to the state’s nursing programs. Legislators plan to distribute the money over a 10 year period. The funds are to be used to upgrade teaching equipment and facilities and provide scholarships for nurses to return to school for a higher degree. Funds in those areas are needed to train more nurses.

Nurses with advanced training are in particularly high demand because they have a variety of options, said Karen Miller, senior vice chancellor and dean of the University of Kansas School of Nursing.

A nurse with a master’s degree could work as a nurse anesthetist, a nurse-midwife, a nurse practitioner or become an instructor.

Miller said it is hard for nursing schools to compete with clinical settings. The schedule may be better but the pay is not.

A 2005 study by the Kansas State Nurses Association found that nursing faculty with master’s degrees earned between $44,947 and $60,000. Master’s level nurses who practice in a clinic make an average of $70,642.

The 2005 study also found that 123 nursing faculty with a masters or Ph.D. would retire by 2014.

If the nursing programs cannot replace them they will not be able to take on more students, said Debbie Hackler, director of nursing at Hutchinson Community College.

According to the Kansas Board of Regents’ 2007 Kansas Nursing Initiative Annual Report, 53 scholarships were awarded in the first year of the education program.  

But that might not be enough.

“The growing popularity of this service scholarship program has a very real potential to ease the nursing faculty shortage by assisting with the production of new nurse educators,” the report stated. “This grant does not, however, address the disproportionate salary differences between nurse educators and practitioners, which has contributed greatly to the shortage of nursing faculty.”

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (2)

Write comment