Nurses needed in hospitals, as university faculty

Posted: April 15, 2009

By Peter Adelsen

As many jobs in manufacturing and other areas are cut, one sector has not faced the same decline: nursing. For nursing grads, there are jobs available in academia and companies.

"After high school, I started listening to people, and I knew IU Kokomo had a great nursing program. And it was close to home, so I took a chance and I got lucky," said Donald Andrews, who is now working at St. Vincent Heart Center of Indiana.

For people interested in nursing, job opportunities abound. Locally, however, nurses who are searching for a job with a hospital locally, it is more difficult to get a job in Kokomo than in larger cities where there is a shortage, said Linda Wallace, dean of the Indiana University Kokomo School of Nursing. The reason is because many people are not going to the hospital because they do not have health insurance, she said. However, nursing homes and urgent care places are hiring in this area.

"I always encourage our graduates to try to think bigger than the local area," she said. "This area is so saturated with nurses because we have two fairly large programs (hospitals) here with our degrees, but if they are willing to think about moving for employment, they are more likely going to get a job."

While local hospitals are fairly well staffed presently, Wallace said this is not the case for the schools of nursing. There is a nationwide nursing faculty shortage. She also said that the average age of nursing faculty is in the mid-50s, with many expected to retire in the next five to 10 years.

The biggest constraints at nursing schools are maintaining quality faculty members, she said. Nurses can make more money as a registered nurse, or RN, at a hospital with an associate degree than a faculty member can make teaching with a master's or a doctoral degree. Salaries at universities have not kept pace with health-care facilities, she said.

"If we don't raise the salaries in academia, there is going to be nobody to teach, and there is going to be a huge nursing shortage so who's going to get people ready for practice?" she said.

A needs assessment has shown that a master's in nursing program is sustainable at IU Kokomo, she said. The ability to offer this program is contingent on the ability to recruit and retain a sufficient number of doctoral-prepared nursing faculty members, she said.

Currently, the school of nursing offers a bachelor of science in nursing, or BSN. Students can earn a BSN through a basic four-year program. If the person is already licensed, he or she can earn a BSN through the RN to BSN program if he or she is an RN and holding an associate degree or diploma in nursing.

Wallace said that hospitals are looking for more BSN-prepared nurses, especially at hospitals that have or are seeking "magnet" accreditation. Hospitals with magnet status are given that title because nurses are drawn to them because of the increased opportunities they have to impact the quality of care, she said. According to Wallace, research has shown that in hospitals with 60 percent or more of BSN-prepared nurses, the patients have shorter stays and fewer complications necessitating re-admission.

With approximately 500 nursing and pre-nursing students, the school of nursing is the largest school on the Indiana University Kokomo campus, she said. The nursing portion of the program occurs in the sophomore through senior years. The program also accepts direct-admits if the student completes freshman prerequisite courses on the IU Kokomo campus on a full-time basis earning a minimum 2.7 GPA, she said.

For more information about becoming a nursing student, contact Morris Starkey at 455-9384.

Link: http://kokomoperspective.com/news/article_4a888e87-fe0e-5a2c-af2d-c6da74fb8f91.html