People who hope to become nursing students in Texas apparently face some major challenges. More than 50 percent of qualified nursing student applicants had to be turned away from nursing school programs in Texas in the year 2004-2006, according to a study just released by the Texas Center for Nursing Studies.
The reason they were turned away, according to the report, is that there are not enough staff to teach them. Nursing schools find it hard to recruit enough qualified (master’s degree level) teachers because the pay for nurses is as much as $20,000 less then it would be for nurses who are working in the private sector, such as at hospitals or doctor’s offices.
And matters may get even worse, because the report says that 70 percent of the current nursing faculty are eligible to retire either now or in the next ten years. Also, according to the Texas Center for Nursing Studies, there is a 16 percent vacancy rate in some areas of nursing. This makes sense, because if not enough nursing students can graduate, there aren’t going to be enough nurses.
How does this affect patient care?
Well, Texas does not have a law mandating how many patients a nurse can be assigned to care for, according to the Texas Board of Nursing. If a hospital can’t hire enough nurses, then each nurse has to care for more patients. Of course this will affect the level of care that the nurse is able to give each individual patient.
In fact, nurses in Texas have been advocating for the passage of a law similar to that passed in California in 2004, which mandates the ratio of nurses to patients. And since that law passed, 80,000 new RNs have come to California. So one way that Texas could lure in more nurses is to create a mandatory patient-nurse ratio to ensure the safety of nurses and patients, and create a better working environment for nurses.
The Texas Center For Nursing Studies has made some recommendations to help recruit and retain more nursing staff, including: Increase the salary of existing staff; offer student loan forgiveness programs for nursing teachers; and recruit minority, younger, and non-traditional students to become nursing teachers.
For plenty of great tips and resources on how to get past nursing school waiting lists, getting into nursing school and find grants, loans and scholarships for nursing school, visit http://www.nursingschoolprograms.com
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