And here is yet another great and provacative brainstorm in the never ending quest to solve the great nursing shortage of the 21st century. This time around, the governor of Michigan has come upon a fool proof plan to mass produce nursing instructors.

From Woodtv.com in Grand Rapids, MI:

Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to create what she’s calling the Michigan Nursing Corps _ a three-year, $45 million plan to train 500 more nursing instructors to help graduate 3,000 additional nurses.

Now isn’t that exciting. The article doesn’t give an particulars, about who will be eligible for this “nursing corps” or what kind of degree they will graduate with. I assume that there willbe some sort of monetary incentive to go into this program, but then what will be their obligation once they graduate?

As usual, the brainstorms of politicians and many of the nursing experts usually doesn’t touch on solving the cause. In this case, the problem is that a nurse with an advanced degree can make far more money in other areas of healthcare, than as a teacher. Being an instructor is stressful, especially if you have to deal with the politics of academia and the road to tenure. Especially if you are a clinical instructor, your job is to keep an eye on your students while they are let loose on patients. And it’s no easy task if you’ve got 7 or 8 spread out all over the place. Thanks, but no thanks.

In fact, many ordinary staff nurses make more money than instructors. So why would anyone want to be one? Could that be why there is a shortage of them?

So what this brainstorm hopes to do, I have no idea. Is any of that money going to be used to bolster instructor salaries? I kind of doubt it. I mean, that would be innovative and address the problem, and politicians and nursing experts don’t want to ruin their reputations by doing something that progressive. I will be so bold as to guess that this program may pay for nurses to be educated as an instructor, in exchange for working as one for three years (the amount of time the program takes). And when the three years are up, at least half will bolt to greener pastures. By five years, there may be a quarter of the original group left as teachers. Many of them may not even be working as nurses, if they follow the national trends.

There is another interesting tidbit of news in this particular article, and of course, it is cleverly watered down so as not to give any real numbers or data. But we keep hearing about the “huge” waiting lists of applicants for nursing programs, and all the bemoaning of how we need more teachers, more space, and more clinical spots.

Wayne State, for example, gets up to 1,600 applicants a year for 160 entering class seats in its baccalaureate program. Not all applicants at certain schools are qualified, but the number that are eligible for classes exceeds the seats available.

At face value, that sentence feeds into the mania about “all of those applicants, not enough spots,” and the accompanying “if only we can accomodate them we will solve the nursing shortage.” At face value, it would appear that Wayne State gets 10 times as many applicants as there is space. However, how many of these applicants are qualified? The sentence which follows indicates that, but cleverly doesn’t give us enough data to ruin the myth.

With a sluggish economy, health jobs are always desirable. That is how it has always been. When I was applying to nursing school way back circa 1979, there were waiting lists at community colleges and state schools. This is not a new thing. Nursing wasn’t even a “popular” job back then, and yet the waiting lists were there. At private schools, there were no such waits.

So how many qualified applicants are there? How many applicants are suckered into applying because they read idiotic websites like Discovernursing.com which tell you that basically anyone on the planet, as long as they are still able to breathe, can become a nurse? Or they silly quizzes which, no matter what answer you give, will tell you that you “have what it takes” to be a nurse. Or even dumber websites, which tell you that there are a lot of nursing jobs that don’t require dealing with blood, dealing with patients, dealing with diseaes—you know, a lot of stockbrokers went to nursing school first before they made their way to the stock exchange.

I would guess that a great many people are applying to nursing programs because they “heard” it’s a good job. Never mind that they failed anatomy and physiology, and can’t add two plus two. It would be interesting to see real numbers–how many qualified applicants as opposed to how many seats? How do these numbers compare at private vs. public schools?

And of course, how many students drop out of nursing programs. From what I’ve read, that number exceeds 60% in some settings. You know, they didn’t realize that they had to touch a patients…