Congressman's roundtable shines light on nursing issues

Faculty, students, and nurses from UI Hospitals and Clinics and local clinical agencies had a chance to voice their concerns about the state of nursing in Iowa March 25, 2008 at a roundtable discussion hosted by the UI College of Nursing. Initiated by Congressman Tom Latham, this was the first of five forums held in District 5.

Latham has scheduled these discussions at various sites around the state to gather insight and comments from a broad contingency of Iowa’s nursing community on how to best address a growing nursing shortage. He expects the discussions to inform his efforts to direct the national debate on the nursing crisis from Iowa’s unique perspective.

The forum opened with comments from Rita Frantz, College of Nursing dean; Heidi Nobiling, senior assistant director, Nursing Administration, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics; and Cathy Abrams, vice president of nursing, Mercy Hospital, Iowa City.

Some of the topics discussed:

• An aging workforce – almost one-third of all current nurses will reach retirement age in the next decade.

• Efforts to prepare more nurses with basic professional education, as well as those with the requisite graduate degrees needed for teaching, are frustrated by the fact that thousands of qualified applicants are turned away each year(due to faculty shortage).

• The nursing faculty shortage is expected to grow (e.g. 75 percent or more of the faculty at the UI College of Nursing are eligible for retirement over the next five years).

• Lack of incentive for nurses to become nursing educators, because faculty salaries are not competitive with those in the practice sector, which offer many opportunities for nurses prepared with graduate degrees.

• Nursing wages are low in Iowa (especially in rural areas and among those with undergraduate degrees) compared to surrounding states and beyond, so many who train here move away.

• Reimbursement has a big impact on the ability to train and to then hire and retain nurses.

• Nursing is still a female-dominated field, and now nursing competes more with other career choices for talent.

• The variety nursing roles today decreases the supply of bedside nurses.

• Hospital nursing is physically difficult and requires nurses to work less attractive evening, night, weekend and holiday shifts.

How legislators at the federal level can help:
• Assuring that the proposed Medicare and Medicaid cuts do not become reality.

• Provide grants to public higher education institutions to increase the base salaries of nursing faculty to make them competitive with standards in the practice industry.

• Continue efforts to increase Medicare reimbursement for Iowa.

• Expand nurse educator scholarships and loan forgiveness programs to support nurses seeking graduate degrees, with the expectation that, upon graduation, the graduate will commit to teach in a nursing program for a defined period of years.

• Fund nursing faculty fellowship programs to provide substantive “start up packages” to enhance recruitment of nurse faculty into currently vacant lines.

• Assist/support strategies/incentives for recruitment and retention of nurses in Iowa.

• Assist/support promotion of nursing as a profession and career choice.

• Assist/support job sharing, flexible hours and other creative methods to attract nurses who cannot/will not work traditional shifts.

• Work has been done through the Iowa Hospital Association
to look to the future and for academia and practice to set common goals. Funding this work and a Health Workforce Center so we are able to truly know what resources are available and reasonably predict what the need will be in the future is critical.

• Reallocate Medicare pass-through funds from support of residency training for physicians to nursing education support.

March 2008