In Nurse.com, there is an interesting article about former auto workers are being aggressively recruited to become nurses in a new life. Even to the point of being given “priority” over other applicants to a BSN program.

In an effort to address the persistent nursing shortage, several Detroit-area health systems launched accelerated and second-degree programs specifically targeted at a growing pool of displaced auto workers.

Oakland University School of Nursing (OUSN) in Rochester, Mich., has enrolled about 70 students in the accelerated BSN program in partnership with Henry Ford Health System and about 130 students in the second-degree program. The Ford Motor Company is offering several reimbursement packages that cover tuition costs for two- and four-year college degree programs, a living-expense stipend as well as healthcare coverage; for auto workers who opted to accept the voluntary buyout program.

I think it’s great that Ford is offering some alternatives for workers who have been “displaced” and is willing to help them retrain for a new profession. But should these workers get priority, for example, over other applicants to the nursing programs? Applicants who may even be more qualified? I don’t know anything about the school offering the BSN, but if it is a state institution, then chances are, there is a waiting list of people trying to get into nursing programs.

But what I find funny about this article is the correlation between recruiting former auto workers (think assembly line, especially since Henry Ford was the founder of the concept), and the “assembly line mass production” of nurses that the experts and talking heads think is needed to solve the nursing shortage. You know, the nursing shortage is simply a shortage of warm bodies, and if we can mass produce enough, then the shortage will disappear. Oh, and as an added benefit, if enough nurses are produced, that will depress wages and erase all of the gains that nurses have made in working conditions. Great news for everyone.

But getting back to this article….

It does say that some of the potential nursing students said that they had always been interested in health care but never pursued it. But what about the bulk of them? The problem with all of these “nurse reach-out” scenarios is that they basically say that anyone can be a nurse. Whether you’re a laid off auto worker, an accountant who’s been fired for embezzling funds, a housewife who thinks it would be fun to work in a real “General Hospital,” a retired police officer looking for a second career, a squeamish type who can’t bear the thought of touching body fluids…” nursing can be for you. The ads that are curently running are ludicrous and insulting to the intelligence, in giving a very distorted version of what nursing is and isn’t.

While I don’t believe that we should return to that nonsense about nursing being a calling, and that nurses are angels, and yadda yadda, still–the profession is not for everyone and should not be sugar coated with cream on top when trying to pull people in. The result is that attrition rates in school are high, and judging from nursing feedback, some of the new nurses who are entering the profession really show little to no interest in patients. They are not interested in bedside care, and are just looking to get in their one year of clinical experience before moving on.

What I find most interesting about this article, is the person they highlighted, Kenneth Kidd, also has no plans to stick around bedside care.

Kidd says after he completes his BSN, he plans to continue his studies to become a physician assistant or nurse anesthetist. “We’re an example of what can happen if you follow your dreams,” he says.

While PAs and CRNAs are needed, there is a great deal of competition for those programs, and no shortage of applicants. The real need for nurses is in bedside care, and also as faculty. But Mr. Kidd, who is entering this program in an effort to solve the shortage, has no plans to do bedside nursing–at least, for any longer than it will take to get accepted into PA or CRNA school. It does seem rather strange, to focus on an applicant who has expressed no real interest in working in the hospital doing patient care, which I would assume would be their emphasis–that this program was designed to fill vacancy slots in hospitals.

But perhaps, maybe they couldn’t find any other applicants to this program who are interested in working on a med/surg floor, taking care of 10 sick patients, and taking the usual crap that’s dished out.