A quiet driver of the nurse shortage, explained
(Becker’s Hospital Review) “In 2006, well before the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization warned healthcare that a severe nursing faculty shortage was on the horizon.
Industry leaders have cautioned about nursing shortages since the 1990’s, but the deficit’s direct correlation to a shortage of nurse educators often receives insufficient attention. A deeper dive into the nursing shortage shows a lack of nursing school faculty is compounding the problem, with fewer applicants being admitted due to fewer qualified teachers.
U.S. nursing schools turned away 65,766 qualified applications from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2023 due to an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints, according to AACN. In addition, according to Becker’s Clinical Leadership, 10,000 applicants were turned away from graduate programs, further limiting the number of educators who need advanced degrees to teach.
