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Nursing shortage continues in Long Island

Long Island Business News August 2, 2002 | Caroline Katsikas Though it may seem cliche, Michelle Kapp chose the nursing profession because she wanted to help people. go to site new york state department of education

“I am very happy with my profession,” said Kapp, 25, who received a bachelor’s degree in nursing at SUNY Binghamton and a master’s as a family nurse practitioner at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus in Brookville. She now works for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York in Flushing, Queens. “It gives me a different outlook on life, and is a skill I will have for the rest of my life.” In years past, many young women felt the same way and entered the nursing profession in droves. Today the numbers show quite the opposite.

Thanks in part to a greater number of job opportunities for women – many that pay more and demand less on a person both mentally and physically – the health care industry nationwide, including on Long Island, is facing a shortage of nurses. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better anytime soon, with enrollment in nursing schools declining over the past decade.

From 1995 to 1999, enrollment in bachelor degree programs in New York declined 12.3 percent. Associate degree programs fell by 25.3 percent, according to the Center for Workforce Studies at SUNY Albany.

A steady decline of diploma programs, nursing education provided by hospitals, has also attributed to the nursing shortage. “They were established as a mean of the hospitals to staff themselves,” said Carol Mottola, a registered nurse and chairperson of the Nassau Community College nursing department. But as the trend has shifted to more formal education, less than 10 percent of all nursing programs are diploma programs, according to the American Association of College of Nursing. Only one diploma program still remains in New York at the Arnot-Ogden Medical Center in Elmira.

New opportunities for women With more new opportunities available, many women are opting to steer away from the nursing profession, as opposed to years past.

“With the Internet mania, it drew out a lot of people who would otherwise consider work in the health care profession,” said Lenora J. McClean, dean of the SUNY Stony Brook School of Nursing.

Rose Schecter, the director of undergraduate nursing at Molloy College in Rockville Centre and a registered nurse, said enrollment is “starting to pick up, but there has been a decline in enrollment across the country. It’s something we have seen as well.” Some believe the shortage will continue for years. “Absolutely. We are too far behind to catch up easily,” said McClean, a registered nurse. “Schools aren’t really equipped or funded to take more students.” A Healthcare Association New York State survey reported in 2000 that over 91 percent of New York hospitals had nursing vacancies, while 92 percent of nursing homes and 82 percent of home health agencies reported shortages.

By 2015, 114,000 jobs for full-time registered nurses are expected to go unfilled nationwide, according to the Division of Nursing of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Schools are not keeping up with the pace” of vacancies at health care facilities, said Robert Murphy, director of legislative affairs at the New York State Health Facilities Association in Albany. The number of nurses receiving a RN license has declined steadily since 1997, according to the New York State Department of Education’s State Board for Nursing.

Given the lack of new recruits to nursing, the average age of a registered nurse both nationally and statewide has risen is 45 years old. In 1996, only 9 percent of RNs were under the age of 30, according to the AACN.

“Many are coming into the field in their thirties and it makes for a very shorter work life,” McLean said.

Hospitals are experiencing the brunt of this shortage.

Mary Ellen Costello, director of nurse recruitment at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson, said the majority of nursing positions created from new services at the hospital has not been filled.

“The increase doesn’t match the supply that is out there,” she said.

Some say working conditions for nurses are a deterrent.

“Young nursing graduates often jump into working at a hospital immediately following graduation,” said Michelle Kapp, who believes that new nurses need more support. She added that the lack of support for her and her friends when they started “put a bad taste” in their mouths.

While not everyone’s experience is the same, Kapp said most of her friends that started out in hospitals have left for other fields.

Some hospitals, though, are offering incentives to attract and keep employees on-hand such as Mather and Stony Brook University Hospital.

“We have a graduate program here,” said Costello. “We take new graduates into the program and mentor them for six months. It’s very important because many are lacking the clinical skills.” The hospital also offers 12-hour shifts, with four days off, and no mandatory overtime.

“We are focusing on retention of the nurses we have in the building,” said Lee Anne Xippolitos, the chief nursing officer at Stony Brook University Hospital. To help with their goal, the hospital formed a committee to recruit and retain nurses. The committee has helped the hospital deal with the shortage. There were no openings this year in the operating room, an area usually desperate for nurses. here new york state department of education

In addition, the hospital offers one-year programs for existing nurses to become critical care or operating room nurses.

Xippolitos added that being affiliated directly with a nursing school helps. “This year we recruited 44 percent of the graduating class,” said Xippolitos, who is also a registered nurse. Another way to draw students back to the hospital is to make their clinical rounds successful. “One, they will come back to us,” she said. “Two, they will learn what they want to develop.” Schools are also trying to draw more students.

SUNY Stony Brook offers a one-year program for people who have already received an undergraduate degree, but would like to go into the nursing profession.

Schecter said enrollment at Molloy has begun to increase, and believes that many people are beginning to reevaluate their work life and contributions. “Nursing allows them to make a contribution to society, to the health of society, and to the care of another being,” she said.

Minna Kapp, chairwoman of the C.W. Post nursing department, agreed that more are rethinking nursing as a career. She said “more people with business degrees” are entering the school’s nursing program.

For long-term help to overcome the shortage, Costello said counselors at junior high schools and high schools need to introduce nursing more. “They basically tell them to go into computers. That is where the money is,” she added.

Legislation aims to ease shortage Nationwide, nineteen states over the past few years have passed nursing shortage legislation, not including New York. The New York State Legislature, however, reformed the Health Care Reform Act this year to provide $696 million to hospitals over three years to improve their ability to recruit and retain qualified workers.

About $651 million of that sum will be distributed as a Medicaid add-on, and the other $45 million will be allocated over three years as a competitive recruitment-and-retention grant programs. Nursing homes will receive $288 million, and personal care home services will receive $597 million over three years.

In addition, bills dealing with nursing education are on the floor, but are tied up in committees.

A significant bill being held for consideration by the state Assembly’s higher education committee would provide full tuition to students in the SUNY and CUNY systems who agree to work in the nursing profession in New York upon graduating. Students in the program have to work in New York for as many years as the state paid for their tuition – up to four years.

Another bill would provide grants from the state commissioner of education to hospitals, nursing facilities, and medical schools.

“Some schools get assistance from the government,” said McClean, who added that SUNY Stony Brook took a 5 percent cut this year. “We need recognition that we cannot do it all by ourselves.” Caroline Katsikas