Bush Budget Threatens Cut for Advanced Practice Nursing Programs

Bush Budget Threatens Cut for Advanced Nursing Programs
John Leighty
Monday April 9, 2007
Graduate nursing programs across the country would feel the sting of President Bush’s 2008 budget proposal to axe a $58 million program that has helped fund advanced nursing education for some 12,000 students annually.Joan L. Shaver, RN, PhD, FAAN, dean of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) College of Nursing, calls the proposed cuts “devastating” to the national effort to educate the next generation of nurse clinicians and teaching faculty.Nursing leaders say the cuts are ill-timed in light of a national nursing shortage predicted to reach 89,000 by 2012. Last year alone, 42,596 qualified applicants were turned away from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs, due primarily to a lack of nurse educators, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).
Faculty shortage bottleneck
Deloras Jones, RN, MSN, executive director of the California Institute for Nursing & Health Care, says research shows the average age of today’s nurses is 48, and for nursing faculty, 52. This means a large proportion of the profession will soon reach retirement age without an adequate number of nurses to replace them.“This was funding being used to increase the number of faculty, and the faculty shortage is now the big bottleneck to increasing nursing capacity,” says Jones, whose institute spearheads innovative public-private programs for increasing nursing capacity in California.AACN President Jeanette Lancaster says the advanced education program administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) provides support for some 12,000 graduate nursing students and that eliminating it jeopardizes the national effort to strengthen nursing faculties.“Nursing schools today are unable to accommodate all qualified students wishing to enter entry-level nursing programs, given the pervasive shortage of nurse faculty,” Lancaster says.She adds that Congress should focus on restoring advanced nursing education assistance and bumping up contributions to an existing $4.7 million nurse faculty loan fund.
Hazardous to health
The National League for Nursing called the 29% decrease in funding for the Nursing Workforce Development Program, also known as Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act, “shortsighted and hazardous” for the overall health of the nation.League CEO Beverly Malone, RN, PhD, says that without aggressive intervention on behalf of the HRSA projects, the nationwide RN workforce shortage will increase to 29% by 2020.Donna Mason, RN, MS, CEN, president of the Emergency Nurses Association, says more higher-educated nurses are also needed for over-burdened emergency departments. “If you need more nurses, you need to make it easier for people to get trained, not make it more difficult,” Mason says of the proposed budget cuts.
Nursing school blues
Shaver says the UIC College of Nursing stands to lose $500,000 in annual training grants used to develop a geriatric/nurse practitioner program, as well as other programs that usually extend over three years.“The effect is likely to be immediate, with little time to find funding from other sources,” she says.This loss of funding comes at a time when an aging population with more chronic conditions is driving a huge need for more advanced practice nurses (APNs), Shaver says. “People need much more guidance in managing their functionality in the context of multiple chronic conditions — diabetes, heart disease, or mental illness — and APNs are best at optimizing this realm of health care,” she says.“Fewer APNs means less access to effective care for patients and fewer people qualified for faculty roles, which in turn means fewer nurses educated at any level,” she adds. “It all adds up to a downhill spiral.”At nearby Loyola University Chicago Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing, a continuation of a grant for a much-needed program in population-based infection control and environmental safety is in jeopardy, says Sheila Haas, RN, PhD, FAAN, the school dean. She adds that the program is only one of two in the country to prepare nurse professionals in infection control.
California creativity
Joanne Spetz, RN, PhD, associate director of the Center for California Health Workforce Studies, says that while the state’s nursing schools could lose grants and traineeships for graduate students, a collaborative public-private effort to increase nursing capacity is gaining strength and could help fill the gap.Spetz says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s five-step Nursing Initiative is pumping $90 million over five years into nursing expansion programs. Hospitals and foundations are also contributing, one example being Kaiser Permanente’s $20 million fund to train more than 700 new nurses in Northern California in the next four years.
John Leighty is a freelance writer. To comment on this article e-mail dnovak@gannetthg.com.

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