Abstract
The cyclical occurrence of abundance of nurses followed by severe shortage of nurses is not new to the practice arm of the nursing profession. The strategies used to staff during shortage years are promptly dropped when shortage is reduced. Lessons learned for long-term sustained supply of nurses are dropped as soon as the shortage has taken a recess. With respect to the education arm of the nursing profession, when the university’s budget is reduced for any reason, the first- place administration looks to cut is the School of Nursing as being the most expensive department to educate a nurse because of the clinical component of nursing education that requires one faculty to 6 – 8 nursing students. During nursing shortage season, nursing service spends millions of dollars to hire registry and travel to staff the units. The school of nursing on the other hand reduces enrollment to abide by accreditation requirements of teacher-student ratio for safe clinical supervision. When we look at the situation simultaneously, we realize that the other arm of the profession has the answer to our problem. When two directors took the risk and the courage to take this bold step, a $15 million dollar 10-year partnership was created, which then continued for 23 years. The service arm provided the following: $10 million dollars in funds and in in-kind contribution; In-kind included 7.5 full-time equivalent faculty of clinicians, state-of-the art-sim lab, clinical placements for all our students except psych nursing. The School of Nursing provided the following: $5 million dollars in in-kind contribution by doubling the enrollment to 72 students/year; added a new cohort of 54 trimester (Tri) Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students who graduated with their BSN degrees in 18 months, trained all hospital Master of Science in Nursing prepared clinicians into faculty roles, and taught all the theory courses for the Tri program. Results at the end of 10 years: 1560 BSN nurses graduated; of these 836 were still working after 10 years at the hospital, BSN concentration went from 19% to 60%, hospital received magnet recognition, and dollars spent was reduced from $33,350,893/year in 2004 to $686,004 in 2013.
Citation: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Nursing Science & Practice. USG Proc J 2(Suppl 16): S1-S24.
