By Alex Sorrells / The Jambar
A faculty nursing shortage is affecting the Centofanti School of Nursing and universities nationwide.
According to Shelia Blank, director of the Centofanti School of Nursing, this shortage can be attributed to an aging population, as more nursing educators are retiring than joining the field.
“With more retiring and less qualified nurse educators that are out there, it kind of causes this bottleneck approach for the lack of qualified educators to teach our students to be the new nurses at the bedside, to be those frontline workers,” Blank said.
Blank said the solution has to start at the federal level by offering incentives to those interested in nursing education.
“Looking at more federal money, more opportunities for grants that schools can apply for that could create those faculty roles. Trying to offer incentives, like employees offering back-to-school incentives for the nurses that are at the bedside,” Blank said. “Maybe offering scholarships, the nurse forgiveness loan — again, that comes from the federal level.”
Blank said it is important to recruit and inform potential educators on the importance of nursing education, and the decrease in nursing faculty makes it difficult to maintain faculty-to-student ratios. This would cause the college to accept fewer students and grow at a slower rate.
“We have strict requirements from the Ohio Board of Nursing and from our accrediting bodies,” Blank said. “So, we have certain numbers — faculty-to-student ratio, so we cannot adjust those.”
A decrease in nursing faculty has been ongoing for several years. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported a 7.8% vacancy rate for nursing educators as of 2023, spanning across 922 nursing schools.
“We’re at about 1,300 students. Ideally, it would be nice if we could have around 25 full-time faculty. Currently, right now, we have around 21, [and] we are looking for one more faculty because we just lost one,” Blank said. “We know within the next two or three years, there’s probably three or four more of our faculty that are due to retire.”
Blank said the Youngstown State University nursing faculty attend conferences regularly to address the shortage and want to continue ushering in future generations of nurses.
“We’re trying to help the nursing shortage, watching those students grow from, you know, new novice students when they first come in, and watching those light bulb moments come on, and really, being a part of their career growth,” Blank said.