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Industry: Email Alert RSS FeedKansas nursing shortage: Recruitment efforts, The
Kansas Nurse, Sep 2003
August 25, 2003
Excerpts only from KSNA estimony to Long Term Care Task Force
General Overview
Kansas is not unique, all states are experiencing a nursing shortage. This shortage was predicted as the aging co-hort of the population increases (the greying of America), the technology and pharmacological tools available in the healthcare community to control chronic illness better and cure/maintain life-threatening illnesses expands, and the pool of traditional and non-traditional students has declined. The working conditions facing RN's has also had a significant impact, these include: increased workloads-caring for more acutely ill patients, salary compression, round-the clock 24-7-365 to deliver services, and the growth of other opportunities that RN's can pursue. For the past 7 years Kansas has experienced a decline in nursing school enrollments and graduations. RN's have left the workforce burned out and dissatisfied with the care they were daily challenged to provide, and many who have stayed, unfortunately have not been able to encourage young folks to tenter the profession due to their own levels of dissatisfaction.
- More Articles of Interest
- Plan to address the Kansas nursing shortage
- Kansas State Nurses Association: Plan to address the Kansas nursing shortage
- 2005 Kansas Nursing Wage Survey
- C.A.R.E.: A recruitment concept shaping tomorrow's nursing supply
- Nursing salaries reported as part of comprehensive salary comparison...
Data About the Shortage: Reports
Numerous reports have been prepared at the national level, and some at the stat level studying/tracking the shortage. There is a report prepared by the Division of Nursing, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) entitled "The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (March 2000)" every ten years. It uses statistically sound methodology, surveying RN's in every state, not relying on Boards of Nursing Licensure data due to its incompleteness and diversity state by state regarding the collection of workforce related data specifically.
The report was published in February of 2001 and it reveals that Kansas has 23, 779 RN's employed in nursing (81.6%), and has 18.4% of the RN workforce are not employed. Now from a statistically perspective, the Kansas numbers arc in the middle range compared with other states. This tells us a couple things, when compared to the national average per state of those not in the workforce (also 18%), we are probably not in a position to recruit those RN's back into the workforce (for now) - if our numbers in Kansas had been higher than 18%, then we might want to focus energies there, but not now. Kansas RN's are still, despite recruitment strategics for minorities and men, are predominantly Caucasian women (never falling below 96% statewide for gender), many of whom are sole family providers, heads of households, daughters, and mother with family and care giving responsibilities. In july 2002, another report entitled "Health Workforce Analysis Projected Supply, Demand and Shortages of Registered Nurses: 200-2020" by the Health Resources & Services Administration (A Divisions HHS) was released that gave predictions through 2020 about the projected demand for RN's in the country. Overall that report indicated that there was a shortage of 110,000 RN's (6%), and that without changes in the system, the shortage nation wide would grow to 12% by the year 2010, 20% by 2015, and 29% by 2020. Unfortunately, that HRSA report listed Kansas as one of the 5 state that according to their data was not going to have a nursing shortage, and that the supply of RN's exceeded demand.
Other studies have also been done, and reports prepared:
Kansas's current vacancy rate in hospitals is 11.3% for RN's these numbers are higher than in 2003 with 7.8 % for RN's. (KHA) The Joint Commission of the Accreditation of Health Care Organization, the Robert Wood Johnson Fund, and the American Hospital Association have all also completed reports and surveys in the recent past documenting, detailing and recommending strategies to curtail, and address this trend. Much of the same data is used in these reports, with slight variations on specific themes, and generally three areas emerge about what needs to be done to address the worsening shortage. Those areas are:
* Creating and maintaining workplace environment that retain nurses,
* Increasing the nursing education infrastructure (there is a significant aging of the RN educators nationwide and in Kansas, and Master's prepared RN's seeking ARNP positions paying higher salaries than pursuing education positions in our schools of nursing), and
* Increasing the financial investments for nursing (for salaries and compensation, and to increase staffing levels causing such great concern for the bedside staff nurse.)
Strategies to Address the Shortage and Actions to Date
KSNA convened a "Nursing Shortage Summit" in April 2001 with the stakeholders in the industry invited to participate. From that meeting a "Plan to Address the Kansas Nursing Shortage" was developed and is being implemented. We are working with industry representatives, educators and staff nurses to increase the RN workforce and encourage workplace environments that will retain them.
There have been two nationwide media campaign efforts in various states of implementation.
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