Health equity, virtual experience are among key factors in building staff pipeline
Re “Why can’t nursing schools meet the growing demand for nurses?” (Editorial, June 12): Thank you for bringing much-needed attention to a hidden barrier in our nursing workforce; the nearly $6 million grant awarded to the MGH Institute of Health Professions brings critical federal support to building the pipeline.
As dean of nursing at the institute and president of the American Academy of Nursing, I think there are two points worth clarifying.
It is true that virtual clinical experience isn’t the same as in-person work, but simulation is valued for its ability to provide realistic, context-rich experiential learning in a safe environment. Simulation enhances in-person, patient-centered learning for nurses in training.
Advertisement
It’s also true that schools are placing students at community health centers and clinics, but these rotations don’t provide any less of an experience. Far from it. “The Future of Nursing Report, 2020-2030,” released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, calls for nursing schools to take substantive actions to enable the nursing workforce to address social determinants of health and health equity more comprehensively, regardless of practice setting. Community and primary care settings expose students to underserved populations who may have difficulty accessing health care services otherwise, and where significant shortages of nurses exist.
Kenneth R. White
Boston
The writer is a registered nurse, an adult/gerontology acute care nurse practitioner, and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, with a doctoral degree in health services organization and research.
Nurses are understaffed, overworked, and burning out
Your editorial “Why can’t nursing schools meet the growing demand for nurses?” misses many of the actual issues facing the nursing profession. My daughter is a nurse at a highly regarded teaching hospital. A recent graduate from nursing school, she began her career in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. For all of her career thus far, she and her fellow nurses have been understaffed and overworked. They also have been underpaid in comparison with travel nurses — some of whom are good, some of whom have no idea what they are doing — who are paid two to three times the rate of a staff nurse.
Advertisement
Many veteran nurses retired amid the pandemic, leaving a lot of new or newish nurses to take leadership roles for which many were not adequately trained or prepared. Occasionally hospital administrators will toss a snack basket or a fleece their way and claim how much they love their nurses, but it does nothing to alleviate the situation on the units. The biggest slap in the face comes when they get an annual pay raise that doesn’t even keep pace with inflation.
No one should have to deal with the stresses today’s nurses face. So you can have nursing schools turning out as many new graduates as possible. But a year or two into their career, their idealistic vision of being a bedside nurse in a highly regarded teaching hospital comes smack into reality, and they might burn out in their mid-20s and leave. Fix that problem and you may fix the nursing shortage.
J. Powers
Ipswich
The preferred term is nursing education, not training (we are not dogs)
When I was a student in a university-based nursing education program more than 60 years ago, I was told that nurses are educated, not trained. To quote a professor, “We are not dogs.” I was saddened to see the word training and its variations used in the editorial focusing on the need for more nurses. The education of a nurse is focused on science and interpersonal theories and requires the ability to make assessments based on a wide base of information (I dare say that today, I would not do well in the technical and scientific context of a nursing curriculum). Nursing is a profession, and no longer one based on the idea of training, or doing tasks over and over again until learned, which was the preparation of nurses prior to the 1960s.
Advertisement
Linda G. Ziebell
Woburn
The writer, a retired registered nurse, holds a master of science in nursing.
We need to address the preparedness gap brought on by the pandemic
I applaud the Globe’s editorial board for highlighting the nursing crisis and echo its call to bolster the pipeline of trained nurses. In addition to addressing the severe faculty and clinical placement shortage, we also must work to address the academic preparedness gap among incoming nursing students.
Recent reports show our youngest learners suffered a catastrophic decline in progress in key subjects such as math and science during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here in Massachusetts, students lost 75 percent of a school year’s worth of math learning and 41 percent of a year of reading, on average, with losses greater among Black and Hispanic students. These gaps restrict the pool of prospective nurses further.
ATI Nursing Education, an education technology subsidiary of Ascend Learning, surveyed nearly 4,000 prospective nursing students and found a lack of academic preparedness was the top reason for delaying or forgoing nursing school. This lack of readiness affects the pipeline. It must be faced head-on so that more practice-ready nurses are graduating. It’s ultimately a matter of patient health and safety.
Advertisement
Policy makers and health care and education leaders need to make sustained investments in academic remediation and innovative education resources to bridge equity gaps and support more students desiring to become nurses.
Sean Burke
President of the health care division
Ascend Learning
Burlington
