Georgia’s nurse pool depleted
There’s a worsening health care crisis in Georgia that doesn’t have anything to do with the president who officially leaves office today, or the one being sworn in to replace him. It doesn’t have to do with any federal program, or with how (or whether) states participate in it.
It’s not even about access to health care — not directly, anyway. It’s about a critical and growing shortage of those who provide it, namely registered nurses.
Georgia Health News reports this week that Georgia’s populations is growing fast, its elderly population is growing as fast or faster, and the number of RNs is dwindling when we need them most.
“There is absolutely a nursing shortage in Georgia,” Navicent Health (Macon) CEO Ninfa Saunders told GHN, and a larger shortage is looming on the horizon.’’
This doesn’t seem to be a national trend, which is puzzling given that most of the factors cited in the shortage are hardly limited to any state or reason.
Demographics and attrition account for a big part of the trend: The RN population is aging along with everybody else, and the most experienced nurses are retiring at an accelerating rate as baby boomers leave the work force. Many more will leave the ranks in the next few years.
That creates a self-reinforcing problem: The worse the shortage, the heavier the workload and the more fatigue and stress there is for nurses still on the job. The potential downside for patient care is all too obvious.
Another factor cited in the GHN report is that the career field for nurses is so much wider and more diverse than it has ever been, so that RNs have many professional alternatives to traditional hospital work. Outpatient care, home care, health coaching, telemedicine and consulting or administrative work are just a few of the choices listed.
There is also a shortage of nursing school faculty because, ironically, it requires a doctoral degree (which doesn’t come cheap), and nurses can earn more in practice than in teaching. So the financial incentive to teach the profession isn’t there.
Even more ironic, according to GHN, is that an improving economy can actually make the problem worse, as some nurses opt for shorter hours or early retirement.
If there is one factor that might help explain Georgia’s especially acute nurse shortage, it’s the chronic crisis of rural medical care. The state’s broad expanses of poor rural areas, served by relatively few hospitals, have far fewer nurses per capita as many can’t afford to turn down the better pay from bigger health systems.
Many Georgia hospitals are addressing the problem with their own recruitment and training programs, GHN reports, some with their own residency programs and student nurse employment opportunities.
Augusta University College of Nursing Dean Lucy Marion told GHN that Georgia needs “a full-blown marketing initiative” to attract and retain nurses and nurse candidates. And the state’s higher education system needs to make nursing school more affordable … for the teachers.
This story was originally published January 19, 2017 at 3:53 PM with the headline "Georgia’s nurse pool depleted."