Public policy is meticulously and carefully crafted to provide solutions to existing problems in the country. An existing problem in the nursing profession is the shortage of nurses specifically in the area of nursing education. Major nursing organizations:  the National League for Nursing (2013), American Nurses Association (2010), and American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2013) have constantly persisted in con- fronting and supporting the cause of increasing the number of nurses and nursing faculty in the nation, finally succeeding in its agenda through the Workforce Development Act, also known as Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act.

 

Why do we have the nursing shortage? Why does data reveal that the nursing shortage is predicted to spread across the country until the year 2030 leaving available 1.2 million positions of nurses by the year 2020 (Jurascheck, Zhang, Ranganathan, and Lin, 2012)?  Staffing agencies have reported a 46 percent in- crease in job placement in general and in surgical hospitals (Lombardi, 2013).  A number of reasons could ex- plain the shortage of available nurses to fill these vacancies such as the nursing turnover rate of 14 percent (Lombardi, 2013) due to retirement, or simply because of increased workload intensified by short staffing.  In 2012, the average age of nurses was 44.5 years, and currently, the average practicing nurse is over 50 years of age (AACN, 2013). These facts predict a retirement wave in 2020 aggravating the nursing vacancy rates in hospitals and the community. 

 

The shortage of nursing faculty is impacting the nursing shortage across the country.  US  nursing schools turned away 75,000 nursing applicants for the baccalaureate and graduate  programs due to the lack of nursing faculty, clinical preceptors, budget constraints, and clinical practice sites (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2012).  A survey of 662 schools with baccalaureate and graduate degree programs had a faculty vacancy rate of 1,181 faculty (AACN, 2012).  A survey in 2011 revealed that 13,198 qualified applicants for the master’s program and 1,156 applicants for the doctoral program were turned away due to a shortage of nursing faculty (AACN, 2012).  The average age of doctorally prepared nursing professor is 53.5 years, predicting a considerable number of faculty retiring in the next ten years (AACN, 2013) aggravating the faculty shortage. 

 

This article is a call to nurses to avail of the Title VIII PHS Funding for Workforce Development (a policy that was enacted in 1964) for the purpose of supporting the advancement of nursing education and serving as the primary source for programs that address the nursing shortage for 46 years (Nursing Community, 2013). The funds are made available by the US Government to accredited educational institutions.  Nursing students will need to investigate the availability of these funds from the college where they wish to matriculate.  Although the President’s budget for Title VIII has decreased to level funding of $224.841 and $140.452 million for the National Institute of Nursing Research for the Fiscal Year 2015, AACN continues to advocate for a more robust fund to stimulate advancement in nursing education (AACN, 2014). 

 

How can nurses avail of these funds?  Nurses must inquire from the financial aid office of the college or university of their choice about the availability of these funds.  Accredited colleges and universities in the United States are recipients of these funds from the State Education Department.  After degree completion, nurses who work in underserved areas such as behavioral health and mental health areas will have a better deal with loan repayments.  Nurses who graduate with a doctoral degree and who serve as faculty in colleges and universities will benefit from some form of loan forgiveness.  

 

Nursing administrators and higher education professionals will have to be optimistic in projecting the outcomes of this policy and must also cautiously avoid an overestimate of wishful outcome.  In this case, predicting the future should involve the state of the economy, the trends in data analysis of admission and graduation rates of nurses from the baccalaureate programs, master’s and doctoral program.  Continuous monitoring of the quality of education, accreditation, performance measures in the practice of nurses and access of patients to healthcare is required.  If a robust and substantive data is seen in these categories, then the policy is working successfully.  This policy will benefit nursing and health care delivery. 

 

I urge nurses to pursue advanced degrees through the use of Workforce Development Fund. The objectives of the policy will lead to an optimization of the healthcare workforce where in the near future, nurses with a larger scope of practice will direct the healthcare needs of patients.  Fewer patients will need to be admitted in emergency rooms all over the country as their healthcare needs will have been met by nurses in the prehospital setting.  Further, nurses with advanced degrees can be utilized in a dual role as clinicians and educators.  The policy is cost-effective, fair, equitable, and its implementation will serve the interest of the nursing profession and ultimately public good. 

 

References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2014). AACN expresses concern over president’s FY 2015 budget. Re- trieved from www.aacn.nche.edu/government-affairs/news/2014/fy2015-budget.   
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2013). Johnson and Johnson campaign and AACN extend minority nurse faculty scholarship.  AACN.  Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/faculty/news/2012.  
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2013). Nursing Shortage.  Media Relations. Retrieved from http:// www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage.  
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2013). Nursing Faculty Shortage.  Media Relations.  Retrieved from http:// www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-Faculty-shortage.  
American Nurses Association, (2010).  Title VIII:  Funding for nursing workforce development program.  Nursing World.  Retrieved from:  http://www.nursingworld.org/Document/GOVA/Federal/Federal-issues/nursingworkf.   
Institute of Medicine (2010).  The future of nursing:  Leading change and advancing health. Consensus Report.  Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.  Retrieved from http:  www.iom.edu/Reports/2010/The-Future-of-Nursing- Leading-Change-Advancing-Health-aspx.  
Juraschek, SP., Zhang, X., Ranganthan, V. Lin, VM. (2012).  United States registered nurse Workforce report card and shortage forecast.  American Journal of Medical Quality.  Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/22102163.    
Lombardi, A. (2013).  Best cities to recruit registered nurses.  Wanted Analytics.  Retrieved from http:// www.wantedanalytics.com/insight/2013/01/15/best-cities-to-recruit-registered-nurses.  
NLN, (2013).  Public Policy Agenda 2012-2013. National League for Nursing.  Retrieved from http://www.nln.org/ publicpolicy/pdf/ppagenda.  
Nursing Community, (2013).  Nursing workforce development programs:  Title VIII of the public Health service act.  Re- trieved from http://www.the nursingcommunity.org.  
Sigma Theta Tau International (2013). Facts on the Nursing Shortage in North America. STTI. Retrieved from http:// www.nursingsociety.org/media/pages/.