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Dallas — Increasing student and faculty capacity at Texas nursing schools stakes itself as the prime legislative priority for educators, nurses, and hospitals entering the 2005 session.

After more than a year of study on the state’s nursing shortage and application logjam at nursing programs across Texas, a Senate bill has been introduced that would establish annual goals for increasing the number of RN graduates, as well as coordinating more faculty and clinical resources between schools.

Organizations like the Texas Nurses Association and the Texas Hospital Association also plan to lobby for more funds to hire more faculty and provide higher pay, as well.

Such proposals stem directly from recommendations late last year from both the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Department of State Health Services’ nurse workforce data that showed nearly 4,800 qualified applicants were denied entry to nursing school — while the RN shortage in Texas now has grown to more than 30,000.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, “lays out some of the issues and recommendations of the Nurse Workforce Data Center,” says Elizabeth Sjoberg, RN, JD, the hospital association’s general counsel.

The proposal to establish graduation goals calls for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop a model by 2006 that would allow the board to project nursing school graduation levels beginning in 2007, and set funding levels accordingly to handle that target number.

Part of determining that number would be requiring two or more nursing schools in similar regions to possibly share faculty and clinical/instructional space, plus teaching courses in a “multidisciplinary” approach that reduces the demand on faculty levels — such as allowing non-nursing faculty to teach courses like pharmacology.

Pat Starck, RN, DSN, dean of the University of Texas School of Nursing at Houston, says the model is similar to the “supply and demand” programs set up in several states to marry the demand for registered nurses with the output from nurse education programs.

Although supply and demand models aren’t new, other states experimenting with the programs have found a challenge in executing them, she says.

“Supply and demand models are difficult to set up and people never agree what should be in the model,” Starck says. But “it gives you some specific targets, and gives you a better feeling to know what direction you need to take, and to know what your gap is.

“It gives you better guidance about what goals you need to set for the state,” she says.

The Nelson bill provides just some of the legislative remedies that the higher education coordinating board has recommended for nursing education.

The board also recommends centralizing nursing school application and admissions into a statewide or regional service, launching loan repayment programs for graduate nursing students, and continuing to develop accelerated education programs.

Another highlight on the board’s list of to-do items last fall was to focus on expanding nursing education opportunities in South Texas, where practice-to-population ratios are among the worst in the state.

The education board’s recommendations could require more than $16.5 million in additional funds over the next two years, according to the board’s report last fall.

Other issues affecting nursing that have been introduced or might be considered:

• In its legislative roundup to members, the TNA wrote that it will seek additional funds for a peer review assistance program for nurses recovering from substance abuse and mental health problems.
• A House bill has been filed that would create new educational requirements for forensic evidence collection by nurses and other health care professionals.
• A potentially controversial measure allowing nurses, pharmacists, and other professionals to opt out of administering emergency “morning-after” contraception to female patients also has been filed.

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