N.J. faces RN shortage.

A New Jersey Hospital Association "summit meeting" held this past November focused on a statewide shortage of nurses that is expected to worsen, leaving hospitals, nursing homes, and nursing agencies unable to fill 14,000 positions by 2006. The current drop in nursing-school enrollments and the exit of nurses from the profession are among the contributing factors.

"It is really just the beginning of a shortage that we are seeing now," says Geri Dickson, project director of Colleagues in Caring, which is funded by the Princeton, N.J.-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to address nurse shortages and other professional issues. "The nursing workforce is aging--the mean age of a working RN is about 43. And the enrollments in the schools of nursing have decreased dramatically."

Dickson, a faculty member at the Rutgers University College of Nursing, acknowledges that the nurse shortage is a nationwide problem but adds that it is particularly acute in New Jersey, where the number of graduates from all RN programs has been decreasing by 12 percent a year since 1998.

Nursing shortages tend to occur cyclically. When the economy is strong, young people have many more career opportunities. Nursing salaries--which average around the $35-40K range-- are not likely to attract droves of nursing-school applicants. "If we paid nurses $100,000 a year, do you think we'd have a shortage?" asks Jo Anne Penn, president of the New Jersey State Nurses Association.

Other factors that make today's nursing environment less attractive include short staffing, a perceived lack of respect, mandatory overtime, workplace violence, and potential exposure to HIV and other infectious diseases.

To help avert future nurse shortages in New Jersey, many in the profession advocate creating a state "center for nursing" to study the situation and seek possible solutions. Penn has suggested that future nurses be recruited at an early age. Proposed strategies include distributing coloring books about nurses to kindergarten children and having nurses speak to students and Scout troops.

"We're looking to attack the problem through the combined efforts of educators, administrators, and employers," adds Dickson. "We're doing it in a variety of ways--looking at the practice environment, looking at the educational system to prepare RNs to meet the demands of the workplace."