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Tuesday February 13 7:01 PM ET
US Lawmakers Warned of Impending Nurse Shortage 
WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) - The nursing shortage that the US health care system currently faces threatens to become an even more serious problem down the road, witnesses warned a Senate subcommittee Tuesday. 
``Changing workforce attitudes and opportunities, coupled with the rapid expansion of career choices and rising wages for women have reduced the potential pool of women entering the nursing profession,'' Dianne Anderson, from New York's Glens Falls Hospital, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on Aging. 

``The need for nurses will be further compounded by the potential health care demands of the looming 78 million aging baby boomers who will begin to retire and become eligible for Medicare in 2010,'' said Anderson, who appeared on behalf of the American Organization of Nurse Executives. 

A study published last year in the Journal of The American Medical Association found that the average age of the nursing workforce rose by 4.5 years between 1983 and 1998, mostly because fewer younger people are joining the profession. During that time period, the number of nurses under age 30 has declined by more than 40%. 
``The troubling picture is we're going to have demand exceeding supply by 20%'' in the not-too-distant future, said Subcommittee Chairman Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark). 

Money is part of the problem, witnesses told the subcommittee, but not the only reason nursing schools are drawing fewer applicants. At Arkansas University Hospital, testified Linda Hodges, dean of the College of Nursing, ``morale is low and frustration is high. Although low salary is a major complaint, the most common frustration stems from the inability to provide the comprehensive patient and family care that originally held the attraction of nursing as a career.'' 

At the same time, Hodges told the subcommittee, the potential future shortage of caregivers is being exacerbated by a shortage of nursing faculty. In Arkansas in 1999, she testified, ``there were 153 qualified applicants who were not admitted to the state's RN programs due to insufficient numbers of qualified faculty, inadequate physical facilities and nursing learning labs, and budgetary funding.'' 

Hutchinson said at the hearing he plans to introduce a bill in the coming weeks to address the problems. Among the suggestions given by witnesses are new loan forgiveness programs to help nursing students pursue advanced degrees in exchange for working in underserved areas, more funding for existing nurse education programs, and recruitment and retention programs for nursing school faculty.