Editor's
Note
Apt pupils
Health
professionals can learn a lesson from teacher shortage
Beth Ulrich, Ed.D.,
RN, Texas Editor
October
30, 2000
A recent
issue of Newsweek (Oct. 2) carried a cover story
on the coming shortage of teachers. More than a million
teachers are about to retire and there are too few teachers
to take their place. There also is a shortage of substitutes.
Sound
familiar? It should. The health care industry is facing
a similar shortage of nurses, pharmacists and other allied
health professionals. While on the surface this may seem
like the same shortage we’ve faced every five years during
the past two decades, this shortage is different.
Previous
shortages have resulted from increased demand, more career
choices for women and opportunities for experienced health
care professionals outside of the traditional hospital setting.
This
shortage has all of those elements plus the double impact
of the baby boomer factor: At the same time that the health
care workforce is being depleted by baby boomer health care
professionals aging out and retiring, the larger aging baby
boomer population is creating new and increased demands
for health care services.
The
double-impact, baby boomer factor is expected to peak in
2010. That sounds far away, but health care professionals
who will or could graduate and begin practice in 2010 are
in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades this year – a time
when young people choose what they want to be when they
grow up. Now is the time to teach those children (and their
parents and teachers) about the rewards of our professions
and encourage them to join us in the future.
A key
difference with the teacher shortage is that it has become
an identified national issue. Both major presidential candidates
have spending proposals to recruit and train new teachers.
Banks
are offering teachers home loans with no down payment. There
are signing bonuses as well as bonuses or pay differentials
for bilingual teachers.
Some
school districts are trying to cultivate teachers from their
non-teacher employees and recruit high school students into
the teaching profession.
Across
the board, school administrators are realizing that they
also need to retain their teachers by providing better work
environments and more continuing education.
Those
of us in health care must learn from our teaching colleagues.
It is time to make sure that the general public, media and
our politicians at the local, state and national levels
are aware of the shortage of health care professionals.
Our
hospital boards of directors are increasingly seeing the
need to learn about the shortage and to respond.
We must
come up with the most effective responses. Signing bonuses
work, but so do employee referral bonuses.
The
former recruit, while the latter recruit and retain. Tuition
reimbursement is valuable to many staff, but the time has
come to nurture our own by having hospitals and communities
offer health care profession scholarships (paid off by a
period of work commitment).
Work
environments that met the needs of the baby boomer generation
must be modified to also meet the needs of Generation X
and beyond.
Most
of all, we need to tell our story, as our teacher colleagues
have, in a way that makes everyone want to help solve the
problem. This shortage is a national issue, but an issue
that must have both local and national solutions.
