AlumniBulletin - University of Alabama at Birmingham

Feature Stories
A Nursing Shortage
Attracting Applicants for Crucial Care
By Roger Shuler
medicine at the UASOM and chief of staff at The
Kirklin Clinic. “Nurses are the glue that keeps
things running and keeps the quality of care high
throughout the institution.
“Physicians, by their work patterns and the
nature of what they do, can’t replace the care that
nurses give. Having fewer nurses in training is of
great concern.”
Nursing shortages are not unusual in health care.
But the current shortage, which started in the mid
1990s and is expected to last until 2010 and beyond,
is most unusual.
“This is the first shortage that has been declared
worldwide,” says Rachel Z. Booth, Ph.D., dean of
the University of Alabama School of Nursing at
UAB. “Some shortages can be predicted; they come
about once every decade. But this one is lasting
much longer.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics says we will
need one million new registered nurses by 2010.
We will have to do something differently over the
next eight years, because we just don’t produce
them that quickly.”
The American Hospital Association says 126,000
nursing jobs—about 12 percent of national capacity—are
unfilled. Those figures cause concern across
the health care spectrum.
“The quality of care, in both the clinic and hospital
settings, is strongly related to the quality of nursing
care,” says Nancy Dunlap, M.D., professor of
Feeling the Need
Nurse educators say several factors—hospital
mergers, layoffs, and heavy workloads—are contributing
to the shortage.
Demographics play a major role. “We have 78
million Baby Boomers going into the older phase of
life, and older people tend to need care for chronic
conditions,” Booth says. “At the same time, our registered
nurses now are older; the average age of all
registered nurses is 45.
“Also, the pool from which we’ve traditionally
drawn students—females, primarily—has decreased.
Other careers have become very attractive to
females, so we’ve lost many potential nurses to other
professions. You take all of those factors in combination,
and we are in pretty serious trouble.”
Health care providers are feeling the pinch.
“There is natural turnover in nursing because nurses
tend to be young and mobile, and life changes
bring them in and out of the profession,” Dunlap
“Nurses are the glue that keeps
things running and keeps the
quality of care high throughout
the institution. “
says. “We constantly have positions that need to be
filled. But as our ability to fill them decreases, it
stresses the system. We have to offer higher and
higher salaries to nurses.”
At The Kirklin Clinic, administrators are considering
a variety of options for dealing with the shortage.
“We’ve been looking at alternate labor forces to fill
some of the gaps,” Dunlap says. “We are looking at
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