Nurses Needed

I recently was honored to receive the "Friend of Nursing Award" for the University of Maine School of Nursing and Husson College School of Nursing during a ceremony in Orono. Nursing issues – and nurse education in particular – have been a priority of mine since coming to the Senate. I was particularly pleased to be presented with the award by Theresa Steele, the Dean of Husson College's School of Health. I first met Theresa when I was the Director of the Center for Family Business at Husson, and one of the major reasons I have been so passionate about nursing issues – and nurse education in particular – is because of what I learned about the profession from Theresa and her dedicated colleagues and students.

The United States is currently facing a nursing shortage of critical proportions. Recent studies have reported an estimated 126,000 nursing vacancies in our nation's hospitals. In Maine, almost one in every ten nursing positions at hospitals is vacant, and we also face persistent shortages of these essential, front-line health care providers in our nursing homes, home health agencies, and other health care facilities.

The current nurse shortage poses a significant threat to the ability of our health care system to deliver quality care. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that patients in hospitals with fewer registered nurses were more likely to suffer from complications like pneumonia, to stay in the hospital longer, and to die from treatable conditions like shock and gastrointestinal bleeding.

Nurses are the "eyes and ears" of the hospital; they often serve as an early warning system when complications begin to develop. But problems cannot be detected and addressed early if nurses do not have time to spend with their patients. Another study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that each additional patient to a nurse's workload meant almost a 7 percent increase in the likelihood that the patient would die within 30 days of admission.

Today the situation is grave today; tomorrow the situation may be worse. Our current nurse workforce is aging. In Maine, over 60 percent of our registered nurses are at least 40 years old. As a consequence, many of them will be retiring just as aging baby boomers begin to place additional demands on our health care system. The nursing shortage will only become more acute if we do not do more to support current nurses and encourage more young people to choose the profession.

That is why I have worked so hard to increase funding for nurse workforce programs, which play such a vital role in recruiting and retaining nurses. And we have had some success. Funding for nurse education programs has increased by almost 80 percent since 2001.

But we must do more. Current funding levels still fail to meet the escalating need. In 2004, the Health Resources and Services Administration, which administers nurse education programs, was forced to turn away 82 percent of the applicants for the Nurse Education Loan Repayment Program, and 98 percent of the applicants for the Nursing Scholarship program due to inadequate funding.

Clearly more must be done to address the current shortage and ensure that there is an adequate and well-educated supply of nurses to meet our future health care needs. I am therefore once again working with Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland to secure an additional $24 million for nurse workforce programs, bringing the total level of funding up to $175 million next year.

I will continue efforts to increase support for nurse education and the workforce development programs that are such an important investment for high quality patient care.

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