More than 1.2 million nurses will be needed in hospitals all over the country by 2014, according to the UVA School of Nursing. Yet nurses are not the only sought-after profession—their teachers, too, are in demand.
At the UVA Medical Center, nurses have been affected by the shortage, but hospital officials say it could be worse. “Right now, we don’t really have a shortage at UVA,” says Dr. Pamela Cipriano, UVA’s Health System’s chief clinical officer and chief nursing officer. “We may have some areas where we are still recruiting, but we feel very fortunate to have staffing in all of our areas.” There are currently 164 nursing vacancies in the UVA Hospital that, when filled, would join the 2,040 registered nurses and 110 licensed practical nurses already working.
The primary concern, hospital officials say, is to keep the ones they already have.
 “Faculty is retiring at a rate that is now becoming significant,” says Pamela Cipriano, UVA’s Health System’s chief clinical officer and chief nursing officer. |
To lure nurses, the Hospital offers what Melissa Frederick calls a “competitive benefits package.” Frederick, director of compensation and interim director of recruitment at the Hospital, says the package includes an on-site child care center, sign-on bonuses based on the nurse’s specialization and traveler nurses who are called when there is immediate need for backup.
“Some new graduates have a guaranteed raise and advancement on the job unit,” says Maria Carlton, special project manager for Dr. Cipriano. “We want to reward them for staying.”
In 2007, the UVA Hospital hired 275 nurses, and 119 were new graduates, a number that Frederick calls impressive. “We are very proud of it,” she says.
To reduce the nursing gap, the Health Resources and Services Administration estimates that nursing schools will have to increase the number of graduates about 90 percent.
Increasing graduates at UVA, however, means increasing the faculty. “If we had 10 more faculty we could increase our enrollment,” said Dory Hulse, director of communication for the School of Nursing. “Budget obviously has a decisive impact on the number of faculty we can support.” The School has launched a search committee to add three new faculty in hopes of increasing enrollment.
“The average faculty member is older than the average clinical nurse,” says Cipriano. “And faculty is retiring at a rate that is now becoming significant.”
The first problem in recruiting faculty is money. Because of the nursing shortage, clinicians earn more, says Hulse, and academia is not able to keep up. “You are not going to have more nurses if you don’t have faculty to teach them,” she says. In 2008, the salary of a nursing faculty started in the mid-$50,000s, while the starting salary of a new graduate in the field is $43,804.
The second problem is credentials. “The candidates have to have more education,” says Dr. Cipriano. “So there are a lot of nursing schools that are competing for the individual with the right credentials.”
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