BALTIMORE (Map, News) - The numbers are staggering — 13 percent of registered-nurse positions in Maryland hospitals are empty and the number is expected to grow to 27 percent by 2015 if changes are not made.

“We have a tremendous need in our state for people who want to become nurses but we have a lot more people apply than we can accept,” said Gov. Martin O’Malley at a Thursday news conference at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson.

Labeling the nurse shortage the “most chronic and immediate work force shortage in the state,” O’Malley announced the allocation of $3.4 million to the University of Maryland School of Nursing in his proposed fiscal 2009 budget.

St. Joseph Medical Center itself has initiated programs to help retain nurses, including LAUNCH [Leading A Unique Nurse to Career Happiness], a graduate orientation program that helps nursing graduates adjust to clinical settings, said John Tolmie, chief executive officer of the medical center.

The Maryland Hospital Association, which released the nursing shortage numbers last August, says 7,000 additional nurses are needed to meet hospital demands by 2010 and 12,300 nurses by 2015, said Janet Allan, dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing.

Allan reiterated O’Malley’s concerns about nurses and said the issue was not entirely a shortage of nurses, but a lack of funds for faculty to teach these nursing candidates.

The University of Maryland has the largest nursing school in the country with more than 500 graduates each year.

“Our school alone denied admission to 400 qualified candidates last year,” Allan said.

“We just don’t have the faculty.”

Statewide, nursing programs rejected 1,850 qualified applicants in 2006.

The $3.4 million, which comes from the Higher Education Investment Fund, will enable the nursing school to double baccalaureate enrollment at the Shady Grove campus, from 120 to 240 students, and increase graduate enrollment from 1,000 students to 1,060 students over the next five years, according to officials.

The funding will also begin to allow the nursing school to maintain ideal student-to-faculty ratios by adding nine faculty members, 14 clinical instructors, two graduate teaching assistants and seven administrative and clinical staff.

The proposed money will also be used for simulation lab equipment, renovations and other operating costs, in addition to expanding classroom space to accommodate the additional students.

jkowalkowski@baltimoreexaminer.com

Comments from Examiner Readers

6:22 AM MST on Thu., Feb. 7, 2008 re: "Nurses lead charge on clean, healthy workplaces"

J corbinExaminer said:
To Paxon, I feel your pain...while at work I too was injured by inhaling fumes from the products used to strip and wax the floor at the hospital where I worked. I had told the environmental employees on multiple occasions that the solvents used made me sick and asked them to wait until a day I was off to do the floors. This usually worked however on one particular day I wasd told the inspectors were coming and they had to do the floors. I ended up with not only a migrane headache but chemical burns to my sinuses that took weeks of steroids and antibiotics to clear...but the floors were clean and shiney for inspection.

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11:59 AM MST on Sat., Nov. 10, 2007 re: "New plan hopes to ease nursing shortage in Md."

Examiner Reader said:
The nursing shortage is caused, basically, by three different things: (1) "Monopoly capitalism", (2) Gender discrimination against men in nursing, and, (3) The absolute and almost arbitrary authority that clinical instructors have to fail nursing students in their clinicals. In "Monopoly capitalism", "capital" is exported from the native country instead of the finished products of production produced by the native citizenry. What is "capital"? Capital is labor, money, and industry. In the case of nursing in the USA, there has been a massive immigration into the USA of foreign born nurses such that the same now represents about 30%-40% of American nurses. "Monopoly capitalism" tends to destroy the two main attributes of "true capitalism" which are competition and free enterprise. " Monopoly capitalism tends to impoverish the native citizenry (nursing work force) which concentrating both economic and political power in the monpolists.

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8:50 AM MST on Tue., Nov. 6, 2007 re: "New plan hopes to ease nursing shortage in Md."

ER girl said:
If it means that I can be seen quicker when I am in the emergency room, I'm all for it!

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