By Joe Palenik
Inside Tucson Business
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"We're bottom, next to Alaska, in the amount of nurses per capita," said Fran Roberts, vice president of professional services for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association. "One of the main reasons for that is we haven't increased nursing school enrollment in over a decade. The population, meanwhile, has increased 30 percent."
The association said the vacancy rate for nurses in the state is about 16 percent and about 126,000 nationally. The national Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the shortage will be more than 800,000 nationally by 2020 if the trend continues.
Other reasons for the shortage, Roberts said, is that the average age of a nurse in the state is about 47, and the work sometimes gets too demanding for anyone but the younger.
Plus, for every eight nurses that retire, three graduate from nursing school. That creates a shortage in itself, she said.
Then again, Diana McBroom, vice president of patient care services for Carondelet St. Mary's Hospital, said there are more career opportunities for women these days and many nurses don't even work in hospitals. Instead, many work for home health care, insurance companies and financial companies that focus on healthcare, for example.
St. Mary's has about 500 nurses and could use 50 more, she said.
Not all nurses at St. Mary's are working bedside or clinical shifts, she added. Some are working in the risk management department, some in quality control and some in information systems.
Marty Enriquez, vice president of patient care services at University Medical Center, said the hospital could use nearly 60 nurses and doesn't open beds if there isn't enough staff to provide a good ratio of nurses to patients.
Wages are pretty much the same across the city, she said, with new graduates starting at $18.25 to $18.50 an hour. The average pay rate at UMC for nurses is about $23 an hour, she said.
The Tucson Heart Hospital has six open nursing positions, according to Jim Snodgress, business development manager.
In all cases, hospitals are focusing on retention and training, with generous incentives for nurses to expand their knowledge.
While the state has recognized that there is a need for nurses, legislation designed to double the number of new nurses by 2007 has remained unfunded, and there isn't any way of telling when the state will find funds.
While in-house incentives help, the need for training is a hindrance. Even so, the University of Arizona, Carondelet and UMC have found a way to add 48 registered nurses a year in quick time.
Under the program, UMC and Carondelet will pay UA to turn out 24 nurses for each system, with classes starting in June and ending 14 months later. The normal route is four and a half years.
The key is that students must have a degree in another field, which means that they already have completed many of the courses offered in a bachelor's nursing program except for the nursing training.
The classes will include people with degrees in engineering, social work and physical therapy, for example, with ages ranging from the low 20s to around 50. In return for the free tuition, the graduates sign a contract to work for their sponsors for two years.
The UA normally graduates 100 new nurses a year, said Marjorie Isenberg, dean of the College of Nursing, and the new program will add nearly 50 percent to that total.
It's a triple win, she said, with both hospital systems each getting two dozen nurses quickly, and the university receiving $1.3 million for its part of the deal that also will open up maybe eight new instructor positions to maintain a one-to-eight faculty/student ratio.
The university will receive $27,500 for each student from the two hospitals, which is not unreasonable, she said, given that UA's research indicated it costs a hospital about $25,000 to replace a nurse.
The university is eager to expand that program, but there are snags.
"We do have a little stumbling block, if you will," Isenberg said. "That challenge is the fact that it's clear that there is also a shortage of faculty. This nursing shortage isn't just about new nurses."
An expansion will put the university out in the marketplace for teaching talent, and UA's salaries aren't the greatest to start with, she said.
Joe Palenik can be contacted at writer@vtc.net.
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