WANTED: Nursing Faculty

City Council and CUNY partner against the nursing shortage

By: Mishka Vance

Posted: 5/1/09

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and CUNY Vice Chancellor and Provost Alexandra Logue have proposed a five-year partnership between CUNY and New York City hospitals so as to provide nursing programs with additional resources to make up for an increasing nurse deficit in the city.

The plan calls for local New York City hospitals to send ten senior nurses each year to teach at a CUNY nursing school. This will allow CUNY nursing programs to admit 100 more nursing students each year.

Still in the proposal stage, the plan will most likely be presented to the City Council as part of the next budget, according to CUNY spokesperson Rita Rodin. It is unclear what schools the proposals will affect, but Rodin said both community and senior CUNY colleges are likely to benefit from the increased availability of nursing faculty.

The health care industry in New York City employs approximately 400,000 workers in more than 70 hospitals. Nursing positions account for 15 percent of all jobs in the health care sector, the largest single occupation in this industry.

Over the past five years, CUNY has doubled the number of nursing graduates from about 800 to approximately 1600 graduates per year.

Despite the increase, New York City and State are facing a shortage of nurses. The statewide vacancy rate for nurses was 8.8 percent in 2007, up from 6.38 percent in 2006, according to a recent study by the Healthcare Association of New York State. According to Payscale.com, a nurse working in New York City currently makes about $28 an hour.

According to some, there is a real need for nurses, not only in the city's hospitals and clinics, but in classrooms as well.

Admissions to nursing programs throughout the CUNY system and other universities are considered especially rigorous. According to a CUNY radio podcast, there are "not enough seats" because there is "not enough faculty." Last year, as per a news story in The Epoch Times, 575 qualified applicants were turned away from CUNY nursing schools because of insufficient nursing faculty and other important resources.

Hunter College School of the Health Professions is comprised of two units: The Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing and the School of Health Sciences. Admissions to the undergraduate and graduate nursing programs are extremely competitive, especially for the nurse practitioner programs, sources say.

For example, the School of Health Professions admits only 66 nursing students to the Bachelor's program each year and has a faculty of 23 full-time professors, according to a School of Health Professions news release.

Alicia Brown, Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing Graduate Program advisor, remarks, "I have noticed that our enrollment in graduate nursing admissions had significantly increased as of Fall 2008." The Spring 2009 class is comprised of 65 graduate nursing students.

The graduate program remains the largest of its kind in the entire CUNY system. The Graduate Center has established a new Doctor of Nursing Science (DNS) Degree Program aimed at training nursing educators as well as researchers and other health care leaders.

The new program, which began in the fall of 2006, was approved at the June meeting of the New York State Board of Regents. The degree will be offered in conjunction with Hunter College, Lehman College, and the College of Staten Island, according to a CUNY Graduate Center news release.

Yet, New York City will need 7,000 more nurses than the city is projected to have in 2020.

Students at Hunter College's Brookdale Health Sciences campus, home to the nursing schools, expressed different opinions about the new nursing initiatives.

Some said they were already concerned for those whom the shortage of nurses will most likely affect. A student even asserted that she was "impatient" to finish her studies so that she could be a part of the solution.

Zalika Sappleton, an undergraduate and a nursing student, said the nursing shortage was why she chose to study nursing. Ultimately, "I'll be one more nurse," she said.

Keneshia Hibbert, an Environmental Studies student at Hunter, wasn't as enthusiastic about the proposed program. She questioned the impact of sending working nurses to teach, even part time, at CUNY nursing schools.

"Wouldn't that mean less nurses actually working in the hospitals, since a few of them would be needed to teach?" she asked.