Influx of midcareer professionals may mitigate a shortage in the healthcare field
By Jennifer Cutraro, Globe Correspondent July 9, 2007
It's mid morning in the pediatrics wing at Boston Medical Center when registered nurse Bill Kerr checks in on one of his patients, a teenage girl with severe asthma. He counsels her on how to stay on top of her disease, then jogs down the hall to prepare another young patient for a blood transfusion.
The medication dosage for his third patient, another teenage girl, who has been vomiting nonstop. "Well," he said, peering into the hospital-issued basin on her lap, "at least it's not as green as it was before."
There's just no telling what Kerr might need to deal with during a typical nursing shift, but one thing is sure: whatever happens, it will be nothing like his days as an operations manager at Verizon.
Kerr, a pediatric nurse, is one of a small but growing number of mid career professionals abandoning the cubicle, the construction site, and even the boardroom in favor of the bedside.
No one tracks the number of second-career nurses, but in the Bay State -- mirroring national trends -- hundreds of people in their 30s and older have begun nursing school in recent years, according to nursing school officials. Specialists say the emerging interest promises to mitigate the widespread nursing shortage facing the country. But at the same time, increased demand means it's harder than ever to get into nursing programs.
Kerr, 53, returned to school in 2005 after accepting an early retirement package that ended his 25-year career with Verizon. There, he spent his days desk-bound following a fairly predictable 9 to 5, Monday to Friday schedule. The retirement offer was too good to pass up, he said, but at the same time, he wasn't ready to stop working.
"I knew I was too young to truly retire," he said. "So I started looking for something that at the end of the day, I would feel I made a difference in someone's life, particularly with kids." He found inspiration in his wife, also a nurse, and his two brothers who work in healthcare.
After completing a semester of general science coursework, Kerr enrolled in a 16-month accelerated program at Curry College in Milton designed for people who, like him, pursued nursing with a baccalaureate degree, and often years of work experience, in another field.
Ten colleges and universities across the Commonwealth have added either bachelor's or master's degree programs specifically tailored to the returning professional who already has a college degree, according to the Massachusetts Association of Colleges of Nursing. They're a popular choice.
"We're seeing across the country, these second-degree programs are the fastest-growing programs in nursing right now," said Judy Beal, the association's secretary and associate dean of health studies at Simmons College in Boston. Nationwide, 12,347 students with bachelor's degrees in other fields were enrolled in second-degree nursing programs at the bachelor's and master's level in 2006, up from 6,860 in 2003, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.Continued...
A number of factors probably account for the surge in nursing school applications, said Peter Buerhaus, a Vanderbilt University professor of nursing whose research in the late 1990s helped call attention to the nationwide nursing shortage. Over 116,000 nursing positions remain unfilled across the United States today, and that number is expected to grow to 340,000 by 2020.
Jobs are plentiful, he said. Plus, nursing wages increased significantly since 2002, making the field more attractive to people who might not have otherwise thought about it.
He thinks the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks may also have played a role.
"I don't have any sort of hard evidence, only dozens of conversations with deans and professors," he said. "But 9/11 caused some people to think about their life and wonder about what they are doing and to ask, were they really making a contribution to society."
But all the extra interest has created a logjam at nursing schools across the country, where demand for slots is increasing far faster than the availability of faculty to teach students. In 2006 alone, more than 1,300 qualified applicants were turned away from baccalaureate nursing programs in Massachusetts because there was no room for them in the classroom.
The average age of nursing faculty in the country is 57, Beal said, and there is little incentive for younger nurses to take their place as they retire.
"Newly minted PhDs in nursing are not choosing to go into academia because they can make two to three times more money by working as researchers or administrators at hospitals," she said.
On top of that, said Carmela Townsend, academic coordinator at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions, many hospitals have as many student nurses as they can manage.
"There are only a certain number of hospitals, beds, and patients, and there's a finite number of faculty to train all these students," she said.
Still, the influx of second-career interest in nursing may be helping to moderate the nationwide shortage of nurses, now entering its 10th year, Buerhaus said.
Recent data point to a slightly less severe nursing shortage by the year 2020, largely because of the migration of older nursing students who didn't start their careers in the field, according to a paper Buerhaus coauthored in the journal Health Affairs this year.
"That is really responsible for the improved projections for the future," Buerhaus said. "It's still a big problem but it's getting better."
Kerr is certainly glad he made the switch.
"I haven't wanted to go to work this much in 10 years," Kerr said. "No customer at Verizon ever gave me a hug at the end of the day."
Jennifer Cutraro can be reached at jenny@nasw.org.
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