Shortage Of Nurse Educators

Millie White

Mrs. Begnaud

English 1113

3 October 2017

Growing Shortage of Nurse Educators

In our country today, there is a growing number of vacant jobs for nurses everywhere, including the education field of nursing. Not enough nurses are produced to meet the demand of nurses needed to run hospitals or the demand of nurse educators needed to educate those nurses. There are several factors that play into why there is a shortage in nursing faculty. The underlying problem to the shortage of nurses is the shortage in young nurses not wanted to enter into the educator’s role due to an uninterest in the field and salary differences.

Schools across the country have a deficiency of nurse educators to teach young aspiring nurses needed to fill jobs

Hannah stated she could not go into nurse education due to a lower salary: “I did not go into the education position. The pay was too steep” (Sorrell 176). This is a personal narrative excerpt from a nursing student that went on to earn her masters in nursing, but chose not to become a nurse educator due to a lower salary. According to a pilot study exploring workforce issues of nurse educators, “Respondents identified salary/compensation as the top reason to leave teaching” (Westphal 2). This was the result of a pilot study to explore nurse educator workforce issues. Recently graduated nurses want the benefit of earning more money. Driving them to choose the job that offers better pay. A personal account and a study demonstrates how young nurses wanted better pay and benefits that were presented to them from a hospital rather than a teaching job. On the other hand, there are solutions to the shortage of nurse educators and statistics that prove these

The pilot study for workforce issues suggests a few factors that could help: “Nursing education must address factors such as salary, working compensation, and supervision to compete with other employers in filling vacancies” (Westphal 3). These factors are the things that need fixed to ensure that nursing educators will be provided with the same benefits and privileges as nurses in other areas of field. The article Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. Department of Employment states, “Healthcare support occupations and healthcare practitioners and technical occupations are projected to be the two fastest growing occupational groups during the 2014 to 2024 projections decade” (Bureau of Labor Statistics 3). This statistic proves that jobs will become available within the next few years. The shortage in nursing can be fixed with the correction of the real problem: the shortage of nursing instructors. The shortage of nursing instructors can be resolved by these factors