A troubling nursing shortage

Here's another reason to be concerned about the shortage of nurses: the more overburdened nurses are, the greater is the chance their patients will die.

New research has found that when an extra surgical patient was added to a nurse's workload, the patient's chances of dying within 30 days rose by 7 percent. The patient's odds of suffering irreversible complications also increased, the research determined.

The University of Pennsylvania research validates the risks of having too few nurses on a hospital staff. It also spotlights the national nursing shortage, which has the potential impact patients in Utah. Some national rankings indicate that Utah is third in the nation in the severity of its nursing shortage

While this is cause for concern, Utahns' worries should be somewhat allayed by initiatives taken by Intermountain Health Care and the University of Utah Hospital to prepare more nurses and health care professionals to help meet marketplace demands. Both organizations have contributed significant amounts of money to enable the University of Utah College of Nursing to educate more nurses with the aim of alleviating the shortage. Part of the money has been earmarked for scholarships for nurses who want to upgrade their education.

While these initiatives are helpful and important in addressing the nursing shortage, Utah's public and private colleges and universities have begun to put their heads together to address another factor in the equation — the difficulty in recruiting nursing faculty in the highly competitive academic job market. The Utah State Board of Regents, which oversees Utah's public colleges and universities, has identified nursing as an area that needs particular attention.

Legislators should give thoughtful consideration to the coalition of college nursing schools that is lobbying for $6.5 million to hire more teachers and enlarge classes as a means to address the nursing shortage. To expand, the schools need faculty that have earned master's degrees and in some cases, doctorate degrees.

Lawmakers should take the Medical Education Council of Utah's most recent report into consideration as they undergo their deliberations. The group's 2000 report cautions that "Utah is on the verge of a crisis in the clinical health-care work force.

"Unless something is done to avert this crisis, Utah citizen will no longer be able to access the quality of health care they deserve."

Concerns over access, coupled with research that documents a higher mortality rate among patients assigned to overloaded nurses, should not only stir debate but spur meaningful policy and budget changes that enable Utah's nursing schools to stretch their resources as far as possible and produce an adequate number of well-trained nurses to address Utahns' health care needs.