Community, university cope with nursing shortage

A nationwide shortage of nurses leave many hospitals with an overworked staff and hospitals overloaded.

Whitney Pile, a nurse at Murray's Primary Care, said the nurse shortage has been a problem since 2000 when she was a freshman at Murray State. She believes part of the shortage can be attributed to age.

"The average age of nurses in the Murray-Calloway County Hospital is 45," Pile said. "Over the next few years, many of these nurses will retire, and we are having a hard time getting nursing students through school fast enough to meet demand."

Pile thinks another problem is the salary for nurses in Kentucky, which is low compared to other states.

"A lot of nurses are moving to other states because they want better pay and opportunities than they are receiving here," Pile said.

Vicki Wallace, a nurse for MCCH, said a majority of the nurses are older because they lost jobs at local plant industries and decided to apply for a nursing position hoping for job security.

"Most kids don't realize the job security they would have by choosing to go into nursing," Wallace said. "There are so many vacancies to fill they would be guaranteed a job as soon as they graduated or before. I was offered a job as a labor and delivery nurse months before I finished the nursing program at WKCTC."

Officials expect the shortage to increase in the next few years, and one million new nurses could be needed nationwide by 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many area hospitals assist by donating money and facilities to the nursing programs at Murray State and West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah to help meet the demand, according to The Paducah Sun.

Lourdes and Western Baptist hospitals agreed three years ago to pay $170,000 toward hiring nursing teachers for the program. In June, MCCH agreed to pledge about $101,000 in the next five years to support WKCTC's program, which admits 60 students per year.

Enrollment in Murray State's nursing program has doubled over the past four years to 80 graduates a year, and WKCTC has increased its enrollment by 40 students a year with two classes graduating annually, according to The Paducah Sun.

Whitney Pile said many nurses are having to work mandatory overtime because of the shortage.

She thinks if sign-on bonuses were offered and hospitals began recruiting students earlier, it would help fill the vacancies.

"We should start going to the middle schools and even elementary schools to talk to the kids about nursing," Pile said. "Most of them have never seen what a nurse does, and by allowing them to participate in more job shadowing programs through their schools they would get that opportunity. Things like that would give the kids more incentive to get into the nursing program."

For more information about jobs in the nursing field, call the nursing office at 762-2193.