Since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, everyone has heard about stressed hospital staffs in Mississippi and the departure of nurses, some for higher-paying traveling jobs.
According to a story on the Mississippi Today website, there’s another problem that could turn out to be more serious in the long run: The state’s nursing schools have been turning away students because there aren’t enough qualified teachers to train them.
The Institutions of Higher Learning reports that the average nursing school in the state needs to hire three more faculty members to admit its full capacity of students. Accreditation rules require a specific student-to-faculty ratio, so every unfilled instructor’s job results in 15 fewer nursing students.
And now the really bad news: The situation is expected to get worse.
“The number of open positions statewide shot up from 20 to 33 in just a few months from fall 2021 to spring 2022, according to the IHL survey,” the story said. Further, “About a quarter of the state’s nursing faculty are eligible to retire in the next three years.
“Nurses worry what that will mean for every Mississippian who seeks health care. As of late January, the state had 3,000 vacant positions for RNs, according to the Mississippi Hospital Association — about a fifth of the total nursing workforce.”
The big problem is salaries. The pay for nursing instructors in Mississippi has not kept up with what nurses can earn in related fields.
The IHL says the average community college nursing instructor makes $65,000 a year, while a nursing instructor at a university earns $83,000. But nurses who are qualified to work as instructors can easily make $100,000 a year or more in a hospital or clinic. With that kind of pay disparity, it’s no surprise some of them have left the classroom.
If there is something more positive to expect, it’s that eventually the pandemic will recede, and there will be less demand for jobs like traveling nurses with higher pay those positions command. With luck, more nurses then will return to work at specific hospitals or clinics, which also ought to encourage some of them to become nursing instructors.
Mississippi can’t do much about this nursing faculty shortage right now. But the problem is on the Legislature’s radar. The Mississippi Healthcare Workers Retention Act would provide extra pay of up to $5,000 for healthcare workers, though it sounds like the pay for nursing teachers also needs to increase to be more competitive. Another bill would create a loan forgiveness program for nursing graduates who practice in Mississippi.
It’s also worth noting that nursing programs are turning away applicants only because they lack instructors. That implies that plenty of people remain interested in healthcare professions, and that’s essential. All our advances in medical care mean nothing if we don’t have enough people to provide it.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
