Nursing gets break in shortage 

The nursing shortage is taking a break, at least in the traditional setting of hospitals and physician offices.

But no one is celebrating. Moreover, demand for nurses remains strong in some segments, such as senior care and home care.

“Once the economy turns around, we’re going to experience the same shortage we did before the downturn, and we’re going to have to be prepared to deal with the fixes that were proposed prior to the downturn,” said Idaho Hospital Association President Steve Millard. Increasing faculty salaries is the top priority, he said.

The economic downturn hit the nursing profession in multiple ways, he said. Some nurses delayed plans to retire and others went back to work. Some kept their jobs in Idaho instead of relocating – to accommodate a spouse planning to transfer or to earn higher pay – though Idaho nurses are paid nearly the national average. These trends combined to keep more nursing positions filled.

Nurse Martie Hawkins in the past year has increased her hours and seen more patients at Meridian-based Horizon Home Care and Hospice. She is a registered nurse who holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and the Certified Wound and Ostomy Care designation.

Her increased workload reflects strong demand for services in her part of the health care industry.

“We are hiring in home care,” Hawkins said. “We are staying very busy, are hiring nurses and have openings for nurses. We are seeing more and more people coming home from the hospital after illness or surgery needing home care.”

Demand for nursing services in the traditional hospital and medical office setting fell after the economy weakened, as population increases slowed and as people delayed elective procedures, Millard said. Patient volume dropped as elective procedures declined in number and as everyday patients lost jobs, wages and insurance coverage. Bad debt increased at hospitals.

Nursing education remains challenged in Idaho even though new nursing buildings opened this year at Lewis-Clark State College and the College of Southern Idaho, and a building is under construction at Boise State University, he said. Many students want to enter nursing programs, and the new buildings help to reduce the number of students who are turned away. But a faculty shortage persists as nurses earn significantly less for teaching than for working as nurses, he said.

The Idaho Nursing Workforce Advisory Council in January released findings and recommendations. Millard was among members.

Findings included that Idaho’s nursing work force per capita was smaller than that of all surrounding states except Nevada and was more than 20 percent below the national average; and that an “education bottleneck in the work force supply chain” materialized due to factor such as a shortage of faculty, limited classroom space and competition for clinical sites. Hospital expansion plans figure to drive demand for more nurses.

The advisory council recommended retaining and increasing faculty, continuing support for increased educational capacity across the range of degree options, and sustaining the current nursing work force – in part by ensuring that critical work force data remain available for planning purposes.

Idaho Department of Labor Workforce Policy Adviser Cheryl Brush, who served on Nursing Workforce Advisory Council, said the findings and recommendations remain important.

“We need to keep kind of a longer view,” she said. “There is probably a temporary reprieve in the shortage of nurses, but I think everyone in the industry thinks that it is temporary. The recession isn’t a solution to the shortage.”

The sagging economy increased the balance in the nursing workforce in a short time, on trends such as part-timers taking full-time schedules and older nurses returning to work, Brush said. “You have pressure on both sides – reduced demand for workers, and workers available seeking additional hours.”

But demand for nurses figures to increase in the long-term as the economy improves and as a large segment of the population gets older – increasing demand for health care services and reducing the number of nurses available or willing to work full-time, Brush said.

The number of nursing students has increased, so the new facilities are welcome, she said. However, the aging of the population puts pressure on the work force of nursing instructors, she said.

Nurses remain in demand in senior care.

“Things like elective surgeries can be postponed. However, the care and medical needs of our senior population pretty much remains consistent,” said Chuck Faylor, director of operations at Valley View Senior Living Community in Boise. The recently remodeled and expanded Valley View offers independent- and assisted-living units, skilled nursing facilities and rehabilitation services.

“We trend consistently rather than seeing a lot of the dips and peaks that you might have where they have more control over their situation,” he said. “Our industry is more need-driven. A lot of times as we age, we don’t have a lot of choice as far as what kind of care we need to pursue.”

Senior care is a good field for nurses to pursue because demand remains strong, Faylor said. At Valley View, he’s starting to see some Registered Nurses apply for Licensed Practical Nurse positions, and some LPNs apply for Certified Nursing Assistant positions, he said. “And we are seeing people coming from other industries entering the senior care field as CNAs, going out and getting certified.”

Given economic conditions, “I just think it’s tighter out there” in nursing, he said. “We are able to find good people, and we have a tremendous staff right now. We have relatively low turnover for an industry that often does see a lot of movement and has seen a lot of movement in the past.”

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