We support Congress in their fight for the Bill for Increasing Education Oppertunities for Nurses and Nurse Faculty Act of 2007 because nurses play a critical role in the health care delivery system. This shortage can be detrimental to the health and well being of patients and the proper function of health care systems all over the United States.
This is evidenced by several statistics: It is estimated between 44,000 to 98,000 patients die as a result of medical errors each year and a primary reason for this is the shortage of Registered Nurses (RN) in the United States. In 2002, the Joint Commission found that for roughly a quarter (24 percent) of hospital patient deaths and injuries, low nurse staffing levels was a contributing factor. In April 2006, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) predicted that the nation's nursing shortage would grow to more than one million nurses by 2020. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing report on 2006-2007 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, U.S. nursing schools turned away 42,866 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2006 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints. The 2006 National League for Nursing report stated that nurse faculty vacancies continued to grow with 1,390 as the estimated number of budgeted, unfilled, full-time positions countrywide in 2006. In our country there is an estimated 78 million baby boomers that are going to require health care services, making this shortage even more of a crisis.
(GovTrack.US)
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4 comments:
This part of your blog really caught my eye. I knew that the nursing shortage had the potential to contribute to medical errors and injuries, but I had no idea that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die each year as a result of the nursing shortage.
In nursing, they are always teaching us to treat the "underlying cause." I think that your bill aims to correct the underlying cause of the nursing shortage. Limited faculty in the classrooms and clinical settings prohibits the country from correcting the nursing shortage. If this bill was passed, more faculty would be available to properly train new nurses and correct the nursing shortage.
You're right! We never thought of it like that. This bill has the potential to correct the underlying cause and that is why it is so important for this bill to pass. Thanks for your commentary!
I think the need for nurses is expressed most urgently in patient care deficits. I think the stats you gave really helped with this point. Don't politicians know that everyone could get better care if there were more nurses? The number of students that were qualified but were turned away also really surprised me. This is obviously a huge cause of the nursing shortage that is only perpetuating the problem. Really good post!
You would think that it's an obvious solution to the problem, but unfortunately healthcare doesn't always get the attention that it should. This is why we need to get as many supporters as we can to help facilitate the passing of this bill!
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