Patricia Meservey & Robert Norton, Salem News, August 5, 2008

Massachusetts is currently short roughly 4,600 registered nurses, representing a job vacancy rate of more than 6 percent. According to the Massachusetts Hospital Association, this shortage is projected to reach 10,000 by 2010 and surpass 25,000 by the year 2020. The US Department of Health and Human Services paints a more alarming picture, predicting a shortage of 16,100 nurses by 2010 and 36,400 by 2020, the latter representing 41 percent of the projected demand.

Whatever the numbers, the Massachusetts Association of Colleges of Nursing calls the situation not only unacceptable, but downright dangerous.

Ironically, there is no shortage of nursing students. Nursing remains an attractive profession, and nursing programs throughout the state are filled to capacity. Most, in fact, are forced to turn away those who wish to be the next generation's caregivers. A 2004 survey conducted by the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education Nursing Initiative revealed that more than 1,800 qualified applicants were turned away from RN programs at Massachusetts' schools of nursing.

Over the past several years, Salem State College's School of Nursing has had to turn away some 400 qualified applicants each year, applicants who would not only have become nurses, but who would likely have remained in the area to join the nursing workforce.

With interest high - and the need so great - why then are predictions so dire?

A number of factors are at work here, but one indisputable fact is that there are not enough nursing educators, laboratory facilities, or clinical sites to prepare nurses in the numbers that will be required. On the national level, according to a recent report by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, US nursing schools turned away 42,866 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2006 due to insufficient numbers of faculty. Indeed, nearly three-quarters of the nursing schools responding to the AACN survey cited faculty shortages as the reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into entry-level nursing programs.

To meet the demand, we must train more nurses in all specialties. Without the credentialed, doctoral-prepared nursing faculty to teach them and renew faculty ranks, however, we will not be able to do so.

To turn out the numbers of health-care professionals the region will require in the future, we must find and hire the faculty to educate them. If not enough nursing educators at the doctoral level exist, we must then take the logical next step to produce them.

Here on the North Shore, Salem State and North Shore Medical Center are taking the necessary steps to make it possible for nurses with master's degrees to continue their education in pursuit of a doctorate.

NSMC, which has a long history of collaboration with Salem State in nursing education, is investing in new facilities, technology and medical staff to meet the forecasted growth in demand for inpatient and outpatient care. But meeting this demand requires the clinical expertise that only nurses with advanced education can provide.

As for Salem State, which is currently the only state college nursing program in Massachusetts accredited by both the National League for Nursing and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the only thing we are missing is the authority to offer doctoral programs. Recognition as a university - something we are working hard to attain - will allow us to do this.

When that happens, Salem State and North Shore Medical Center - working together - will at last be able to not only address the nursing shortage, but put in place the mechanisms to ensure that the region north of Boston once again has all the well-educated, well-trained, and well-prepared nurses its future requires.

Dr. Patricia Maguire Meservey is president of Salem State College and a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. Robert Norton is CEO of N orth Shore Medical Center.

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