University senior Amanda White will likely have plenty of job offers that come with benefits and high pay after graduation.
The nationwide nursing shortage is expected to put health care students and professionals in high demand during the next decade and beyond.
White, who has wanted to become a nurse since she was 12 or 13, said nurses and doctors caring for hospitalized family members influenced her career choice when growing up.
“I saw how amazing one doctor or nurse can be,” she said.
White said she wants to become a traveling nurse after she earns a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University and plans on attending a five-quarter nursing program at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
Employment in Oregon health care occupations is expected to grow by 23 percent by 2014, compared with 15 percent for overall employment, according to an Oregon Employment Department study.
“Nurses will have job security for several decades to come and endless opportunities,” said registered nurse Cathleen Coontz, workforce development coordinator for PeaceHealth.
At Sacred Heart Medical Center, the average age of a nurse is 48, and the majority of nurses are within 10 years of retirement, Coontz said.
Although a recent National Center for Health Statistics report warns that there may be an increasing shortage of nurses to care for the aging population, Oregon health care educators have been taking steps for the past several years to prepare for the shortage.
OHSU and community colleges around the state are expanding their programs to educate more nurses.
More than 1,200 applicants applied for 290 openings for the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree in their hometowns through a partnership of OHSU and community colleges last year, according to an OHSU press release. Students at Lane Community College will be able to earn a bachelor’s degree in Eugene through OHSU next year. LCC currently offers an associate’s degree in nursing.
RN Julia Munkvold, nursing program coordinator at LCC, said that the college’s program received about 400 applicants for fall term, compared with about 240 in 2005. The program has seen an influx in applicants for the past three years.
Through a partnership with the University and PeaceHealth, OHSU will open a satellite campus in Eugene to train physicians in 2008.
Aging baby boomers demanding more health care and retiring nurses and physicians, along with a growing population, will test Oregon’s health care system in the years to come. Baby boomers who retire during the next decade or so will affect the labor force in nearly every industry, but the shift is expected to affect the health care industry in a unique way.
“As baby boomers leave the workforce and work less, the amount of health care needed is going to increase because we have a huge chunk of the population getting older,” Coontz said.
Sacred Heart isn’t experiencing the effects of the nursing shortage yet, Coontz said. The hospital is preparing for the shortage and expects more demand in health care services because of area population growth and the addition of a second main facility in Springfield by the summer of 2008.
“I anticipate that if we’re not really strategic over the next 12 or 18 months, we’ll feel the nursing shortage in a much more significant way,” Coontz said.
Oregon’s rural areas are expected to be hit the hardest because OHSU is the only major medical school in the state, OHSU spokesman George Mason said.
Other factors have brought on the expected shortage.
Fewer people have been choosing nursing as a profession, Coontz said.
“If we jump back 20 or 30 years, a young woman had two career options, nursing or teaching,” she said. “Now options are in no way restricted for females.”
The profession has also expanded and is more integrated, Coontz said. Nurses can work in various departments, including management, education, research and development.
“They’re being spread thin because they’re being utilized more,” Coontz said.
When the Northwest Health Foundation released a 2001 study that indicated a shortage could affect patient care and increase the cost of health care, policy makers started to take note.
“People started realizing, ‘Wow, we have to start doing something or we’ll find ourselves in a desperate situation,’” Coontz said.
Partnerships have formed between government, educational and private institutions. New programs have opened at Newberg’s George Fox University and Newport’s Oregon Coast Community College, and other programs are expanding.
Coontz said a partnership with Springfield’s McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center, Sacred Heart and LCC increased the number of accepted students from around 50 to around 70 at LCC.
In the private sector, hospitals are also trying to retain employees.
At Sacred Heart, senior nurse mentors who are 55 or older and have been employed at the hospital for more than 10 years help train recent graduates to increase patient safety.
“We want to bridge what we call the knowledge gap,” Coontz said. “You’ve got 20 years of expertise, knowledge and intuition that’s built into a senior nurse. You can’t get that in a grad.”
The program will help retain recent graduates, who can experience stress on the job, Coontz said. She said about 40 percent of new graduates leave the profession within the first two years.
The hospital also offers would-be retiring nurses reduced hours with full-time benefits, Coontz said. Sacred Heart also provides scholarships and tuition reimbursement to its employees.
OHSU is expanding education resources to rural Oregon, Mason said. The school offers education for students in rural areas through online classes and community colleges.
OHSU is also trying to attract physicians who have retired to come back to work and is expanding its Portland-area medical and nursing school to train more students.
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By the numbers
1,208 – Number of new registered nurses needed annually statewide until 2014
1,097 – Number of graduates who completed a registered nurse program in 2004-05
111 – Difference between demand for nurses and supply for nurses statewide
57 – Number of registered nurse program grads at Lane Community College in 2004-05
$61,523 – Average annual income for registered nurses statewide
Source: Oregon Employment Department