Legislators grapple with shortage of nurses

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 9:45 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Nevada has the worst shortage of nurses in the nation, and officials told lawmakers Monday that it will take an investment of $12 million in the state's college system to close the gap.

Monday's testimony before the Health and Human Services Committee made it clear, however, that there are very different opinions about the cause of the shortage and the solution.

Some say the problem is low salaries, others contend it's short staffing in the hospitals and still others say it's the increase in population and the small number of nurses being produced by the university system.

Nevada has 520 nurses for every 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 782 for every 100,000 people, Lisa Black, executive director of the Nevada Nurses Association, said.

It's a critical shortage because "understaffing jeopardizes patient care," she said.

That's why the 2001 Legislature directed the University and Community College System of Nevada to develop a program to double the number of nurses. The college system came up with a $12 million recommendation.

Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, complained recently that the university's recommendation is near the bottom of the priority list and said he intends to move it up.

Doreen Begley, nurse executive for the Nevada Hospital Association, said the university system is producing 264 nurses and that it needs to turn out 716 annually to keep up with the "explosive growth."

Chancellor Jane Nichols said Nevada's college system has nursing programs at its seven campuses but it needs to double the faculty in order to produce enough new nurses.

She wants to run a year-round program to allow students to complete their education sooner. It would be an "intensive, expensive program," she said. Currently the state does not pay for summer programs.

"We need start-up costs for summer school," she told the committee. The community colleges are also working on programs to interest high school students in the nursing profession, said Nichols.

Bill Welch, president and chief executive officer of the Nevada Hospital Association, told the committee that three new hospitals in Clark County will open in 2004 and they are recruiting nationally and internationally for nurses.

"The additional beds will not be of much value unless we have the staff," he said. He estimated hospitals in the state now are short 1,200 nurses.

In addition to pay and bonuses, hospitals are "spending hundreds of thousands of dollars" on scholarships, he said.

The average salary for a staff nurse in a Nevada hospital is $51,200, according to association officials, who also said that the industry is spending $1 million a year to recruit nurses from other places.

Nevada is 12th in the nation in nursing salaries, second-highest in the West after California, officials said. In addition, hospitals report that they are paying bonuses of $5,000 to $10,000 for each one-year commitment from specialty nurses.

Jerri Strasser, a nurse at University Medical Center, told the Assembly Health and Human Services Committee that nurses are leaving the hospitals because of inadequate staff and overtime.

"It's a never-ending merry-go-round of short staffing and mandated overtime," said Strasser, a representative of Service Employees International Union.

The nurses are leaving hospitals to work in medical offices, insurance companies, nursing homes, surgical centers and other places where there is less work and less stress, she said.

"We just need to bring them back to the hospitals," Strasser said.

But Assemblyman Joe Hardy, R-Boulder City, a physician, told Strasser that if you "take the RNs from offices and surgical centers, that will not solve the nursing shortage. This is a pervasive problem in offices, surgical centers and hospitals."

Black said the current nursing shortage is the result of a chain of events that began in the mid-1990s, when hospitals cut costs by laying off nurses. Nurses make up 20 percent of the cost of a hospital, Black said.

"Students began to shy away from the nursing programs," Black said. As a result schools reduced their nursing educational programs.

She agreed with the state college officials that "we don't have the funding or the facilities to educate."