State’s nursing student capacity may double

Friday, Feb. 18, 2005 | 11:09 a.m.

Nevada's university system is on track to meet its Legislative mandate to double its nursing capacity by the end of the year, according to a systemwide status report.

Nursing enrollment throughout the University and Community College System of Nevada's seven teaching institutions is expected to top 1,300 students this school year or at the latest by the fall, system officials said. Only 623 students were enrolled in 2000-2001.

The system is expected to meet that goal despite a critical shortage of nursing faculty and limited money behind the initiative, nursing program directors said.

"This is probably one of the greatest success stories we've ever had," said Crystal McGee, senior research analyst for the system. The Board of Regents health education task force is scheduled to discuss the report this afternoon.

But two roadblocks ahead may derail the initiative from hitting its goal -- lack of funding and lack of teachers, system officials said. The mandate to increase enrollment was to help ease the nursing shortage in the state, but all three of Southern Nevada's institutions are desperate for nursing faculty.

Most of the system's budget request is to help the state's community colleges meet their state-mandated teaching ratios and to cover the cost of offering nursing classes in summer school, according to a budget report presented to the Legislature last month. It also includes about $250,000 for a bachelor's degree at Great Basin College and $771,000 for a doctorate in nursing at UNLV.

"The Legislature wants us to do this, and we've done it," Carolyn Yucha, dean of the School of Nursing at UNLV, said. "It's disappointing if it's not going to be supported."

Neither the Board of Regents or the state have addressed the need to increase salaries for nursing faculty, nursing directors said. Nurses with master's degrees are rare and the ones who are available make more money as hospital administrators.

State law requires institutions to have one faculty member per eight students in the clinical setting, making it difficult to expand nursing programs, Yucah said.

"The bottleneck for all schools in Southern Nevada is the nursing faculty shortage," Yucah said. "As bad as the nursing shortage is the nursing faculty shortage is even worse."

UNLV currently is searching for five full-time faculty members, the Community College of Southern Nevada needs four and Nevada State College needs at least two, directors said.

"We are all fighting for the same people," Connie Carpenter, director of nursing at Nevada State College, said.

CCSN in particular will only be able to hit its goal of serving 500 students if its gets the additional faculty its needs by fall, Fran Brown, dean of health sciences, said. The college has lost at least one faculty member to UNLV because the university was able to offer a higher salary.

Despite the faculty shortage, the system surpassed its enrollment goal of 1,049 students for 2003-2004 by 52 students, McGee said. The enrollment growth has been exclusively in Southern Nevada.

Between 2000-2001 and 2003-2004, UNLV increased its total headcount by 57 students to 249, CCSN increased its total headcount by 227 students to 377 and the start-up of the state college added 88 additional students.

UNLV currently has 188 undergraduate students currently enrolled with another 48 expected to enroll in the summer, Yucha said. More than 800 students are in pre-nursing general education classes.

The university's nursing enrollment may appear to shrink this school year because UNLV reduced its program from a five-semester course to four semesters, Yucha said, but the switch will allow the university to produce more nurses faster.

Yucha expects to graduate about 120 nurses this year, compared with about 70 to 80 in previous years.

The state college currently has 201 total students enrolled in its nursing programs, including 31 students in a one-year accelerated program for students who already have a bachelor's degree in another subject, Carpenter said.

The college will graduate its first class of 35 students in May, its first accelerated class of 31 students in August and another 30 students in December, Carpenter said.

CCSN has 391 students currently enrolled, about 100 students short of the college's goal, Brown said. More than 230 students, however, have applied for the fall, and the college graduated a record 138 students in 2004.

The increased nursing enrollment rates won't be fully reflected in the system's graduation rates for another year or so, McGee said, because most of the new students started classes in the last year.

The 2001 and 2003 Legislatures mandated that the system double its nursing enrollment to attempt to meet a critical shortage of nurses in Nevada and across the country. A 2000 Health and Human Services report found that Nevada had 520 employed nurses per 100,000 population, far below the national average of 782.

A more recent report in 2002 projected that Nevada would be about 1,800 nurses short to meet its needs in 2005.