Ingrams June 2023

whose academic progress had been de layed by the pandemic restrictions on schools, to the point where some en rolled students had to be dismissed al together. In addition, she said, “many of our students are working nurses, and with the pandemic, if they hadn’t already dropped, began to experience burnout and school was the first to go.” In addition, UMKC centralized its academic advising process in the fall of 2020, leading to more turnover, then retention challenges. The final factor was a reduction in staffing for recruit ment, admissions and advising, which has recently been addressed with new resources. “We’ve been working hard to rebuild our numbers,” Bauer said. Reversing the trends will not be easy, nursing professionals say. “One of the most significant chal lenges confronting nursing programs, and health-care programs in general, is the availability of clinical placements,” said Elbe. “It is crucial for students to gain hands-on patient experience, but the decreased number of health- care providers has made it increasingly

lenge is a shortage of faculty in schools of nursing to help teach students. … We are trying to be creative in what we do to support the program, estab lishing a foundation that contributes to retention of those nurses in the long run.” Perhaps the best defense against current trends in nursing-program en rollment is a good offense, in terms of creating conditions where nurses want to be part of the team. “We have built a culture of nurs ing excellence and fostered a positive working environment that attracts nurses to our hospital,” said Sarah Oakley, vice president and chief nurs- ing officer at North Kansas City Hos pital. “To help recruit new gradu ates, we have created a strong nurse residency program and partner with nursing schools to offer clinical rota tions.” The hospital recently received news that it had been designated once again as a Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, she noted, and the hospital

The good news for hospitals is that the turnover spike of 2020-21 appears to have leveled off. That’s the case at University Health, where Amy Peters, chief nursing officer, has seen the fig urative bleeding stop. Huge pay increases offered to traveling nurses during the pandemic

lured many away from hospitals, she said, but that work isn’t without de mands of its own, and some tempted by the higher pay are coming back. So too are some who felt the need

Amy Peters

to step away from the stress entirely, but weren’t willing to shut out the call to serve that led them to nursing. Those developments, Peters says, “have been fantastic. We’ve hired quite a few nurses back into our nursing work force, which is slowly helping put our work force back together.” University Health has also expand ed or implemented new programs,

U.S. Nursing School Enrollments, 1994-2022 Following a protracted six-year-decline in enrollments at the end of the 20th century, nursing schools nationwide enjoyed more than 20 years of uninterrupted increases—until last year. That’s when the combined numbers in nursing school fell 1.4 percent.

20 15 10

5 0 -5 -10

1994

2022

difficult for nursing programs to se cure suitable clinical rotations for students.” That, in turn, has created a strain on all nursing and health-care pro grams, she said, and it’s increasingly difficult to find appropriate clinical opportunities for students.

working with other universities, to rec- ruit students to the profession and give them clinical tools and other skills to move into career tracks. “These are tiny steps forward to fill the pipeline, but the schools are hurt ing,” Peters says. “I believe interest in careers in nursing exists, but the chal

believes in empowering nurses to manage their practice through shared decision-making and NKCH’s Shared Governance Councils. The collective work of its nurses, she says, is “the reason we continue to be an employer of choice for the area’s best nursing talent.”

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Kansas City’s Business Media

June 2023