Filling the Healthcare Gap by Recruiting Nursing Students

Amid a nationwide nursing shortage, revolutionary strategies are rising to scheme the following era of healthcare heroes. From holistic admission processes to dual stage functions, the bolt is on to have the healthcare gap by redefining how we recruit nursing students.

The anguish: Hospitals, outpatient clinics, and educated nursing facilities are attempting to have an estimated 193,100 registered nurse job openings. 

“Finding sufficient nurses to have positions and meet the growing demand for nursing care is an ongoing anguish,” mentioned Deborah Trautman, PhD, RN, FAAN, president and chief executive officer of the American Affiliation of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). 

Some hospitals possess increased salaries, equipped signing bonuses, and expanded benefits programs to recruit and support nurses. Composed, the lengthy-timeframe blueprint to the nursing shortage begins with enrolling the following era of registered nurses (RNs) in nursing college.

Attracting Nursing Students

Nursing colleges are utilizing a combine of primitive recruitment strategies, including outreach to excessive colleges, career gala’s, and social media campaigns, to scheme fresh students alongside more inventive efforts to expand enrollment.

Rolling admission with classes equipped in spring, summer season, and plunge semesters that enable colleges to accommodate more students, as well to dual stage functions to grant concurrent Associate and Bachelor of Science levels in less time and for decrease tuition than incomes separate levels, are two in style strategies colleges are utilizing to graduate more nursing students. Faculties are moreover introducing fresh stage functions for nurses. 

In plunge 2023, Dallas College, with campuses spherical Dallas County, Texas, added a BSN program to its curriculum; the college already had a longtime affiliate stage program in nursing. And the College of North Carolina, Charlotte, plans to initiate an accelerated four-semester BSN in plunge 2025 to elongate enrollment. In Waco, Texas, Baylor College created an accelerated on-line program that lets in students to total their clinical hours at web sites shut to their homes.

Command-entry Grasp of Science in Nursing (DEMSN) functions equivalent to those equipped via the College of Vermont in Burlington and the College of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), possess moreover proven in style. These functions originate an accelerated course to nursing careers for folks with undergraduate levels in fields as opposed to nursing. The DEMSN program at UNLV, which launched in plunge 2023, attracted 489 applicants for its 96 spots.

“Command-entry MSN functions provide a sooner formulation to earn more licensed nurses into the discipline to tackle [nursing] shortages,” mentioned Angela Silvestri-Elmore, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC, CNE, affiliate professor and affiliate dean of prelicensure education at UNLV. “The efficiency in education helps to meet the demands of contemporary healthcare.”

A growing want of nursing colleges possess moreover known the need to diversify their applicant swimming pools. UNLV provides a holistic admissions direction of that considers life experiences along with grades and test scores. Accepting nontraditional students into nursing college is now not a brand fresh belief; it is going to lengthen enrollment and student diversity.

Other colleges possess targeted on enrolling more males in nursing functions to tackle the nursing shortage. At hide, unbiased 12.6% of RNs are males. 

Columbia College College of Nursing in Unique York City and Western Governors College in Millcreek, Utah, are among the colleges which possess revealed data and articles about males in nursing on their web sites. Several US colleges possess moreover established chapters of The American Affiliation for Males in Nursing (AAMN). 

AAMN publishes an annual listing of the head colleges within the nation for male nursing students in step with efforts, equivalent to strategic plans to elongate the want of male students, to hyperlink male students with feature devices, career gala’s focused on males, and marketing materials and direction inform material related to male students.

A growing want of scholarships can even moreover support nursing colleges recruit and support students. Most nursing students steal out loans to finance their education, and the median quantity of student loan debt after graduation is upward of $40,000, based totally on AACN data. Furthermore, study presentations that nurses who graduate with student loan debt same to 50% of their annual pre-tax profits will desire a mean of 10 years to repay their loans.

The Downside of College

Even with rolling admission, fresh stage functions, increased scholarships, and efforts to scheme nontraditional students to nursing, enrollment in some nursing college functions is declining. The want of students enrolled in RN-to-BSN functions reduced practically 10% from 2022 to 2023, and enrollment in grasp’s and PhD nursing functions moreover declined. Apparently, declining enrollment would now not basically signal a lack of interest in nursing.

Knowledge from the AACN uncover that nursing colleges turned into away 65,766 licensed functions from baccalaureate and graduate nursing functions in 2023. Inadequate clinical web sites, study room space, and clinical preceptors had been basically the most well-known factors for now not admitting licensed applicants to nursing colleges — in other words, college shortages.

“Availability of licensed educating college is obligatory for enrollment in nursing colleges,” mentioned Linda Plank, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, dean, and clinical affiliate professor on the Louise Herrington College of Nursing at Baylor College. 

Plank neatly-known that some colleges fight to earn licensed college to educate in their nursing colleges, whereas others lack the funds to quilt their salaries. The gap between educating and note settings is moreover a anguish. “In frequent, nursing education pays lower than nurses can carry out in clinical settings,” she informed Medscape Medical News. 

Several states, including Nevada, South Carolina, and Arkansas, possess directed funds toward growing nursing graduate and undergraduate functions and growing the want of nurse educators. At the federal stage, the bipartisan Nurse College Shortage Reduction Act was once launched in January 2024 to place a pilot program to elevate the wages and slim the pay gap between nurse educators and nurses working in acute care settings to aid recruit and support more nursing college college. 

“The healthcare discipline wants more nurses,” Plank mentioned. “Nursing colleges possess a big responsibility in looking out for to aid out with the nursing shortage.”

Jodi Helmer is a freelance journalist who writes about successfully being and wellness for Fortune, AARP, WebMD, Fitbit, and GE Properly being.