Wednesday, February 11, 2009

New Employment Stimulus Idea

Here is a perfectly perfect idea to boost employment in nursing.
Nurses will be needed in greater and greater numbers as the baby-boom generation ages. Why don't we just train the nurses we need? Because nursing instructors don't earn as much as nurses earn, so nobody stops nursing to teach unless they can't nurse anymore. Because of this, nursing schools are competitive and only have a few seats each term. Additionally, nursing is not taught year-round so you have one shot each year to get a spot in a nursing school. If the need is really there, then this system is broke.
My idea has two parts. First we should offer every nurse from every area of care the opportunity to teach one 8-week class per year on salaried sabbatical from the hospital or care facility where they work. They get a break from their real work and the schools get all of the experienced nurses they need to teach. Also, because they are paid by the facility, the savings in cost of teaching wages can bring down the cost of nursing school.
The second part of the plan is this. With this plethora of nursing teachers, every nursing school can start new sessions every eight or sixteen weeks, thereby injecting the medical community with more qualified nurses more often.
This is a win-win situation for the nursing schools, nurses, and health care facilities. There can even be a participation incentive by schools partnering with facilities to place nurses after school is complete. Say the facility agrees to provide six nurses a year to the school. At the most, the facility has paid about $70,000 in salaries and benefits to these six nurses while they each take a different two-month break to teach. That hospital then gets to have priority for student placement in their facility. Its like a farm team. As they build a higher level of qualified nurses in the facility they can provide more nurses to teach.
Someone needs to get this idea up and running. Immediately.

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