Oregon Sees Nursing School Applications Dry Up: Report

Oregon’s nursing scarcity is on monitor to worsen as faculties aren’t producing sufficient nurses regardless of excessive demand for the career, in response to a brand new report. 

The report, produced by the Oregon Heart for Nursing and the College of California, San Francisco, was requested by lawmakers earlier this 12 months and supplies an summary of the mounting challenges the Legislature faces because it seeks to handle the state’s scarcity of nurses within the 2023 session. 

“The examine findings point out Oregon’s nursing workforce is severely harassed and that the COVID-19 pandemic revealed and exacerbated present points,” reads the report’s government abstract. “The present nurse staffing shortages look like widespread.”

Oregon has seen nurses reduce on hours or depart the career over working circumstances. Whereas Oregon has seen the variety of registered nurses rise from 1,384 in 2011 to 1,783 in 2021, there are fewer individuals getting into the career’s pipeline. 

The variety of purposes to Oregon’s nursing applications have been declining for the reason that 2017-2018 faculty 12 months when over 5,000 certified candidates utilized to bachelor’s diploma applications and over 3,000 utilized to affiliate’s diploma applications, in response to the report. For the 2020-2021 faculty 12 months, bachelor’s applications noticed about 4,500 purposes and round 2,400 for associates. 

“There isn’t a warehouse of nurses who’re simply ready for us to name them,” Jana Bitton, government director of the Oregon Heart for Nursing, instructed the Home Well being Committee on Wednesday. 

Oregon has relied on nurses migrating to the state, and rural communities and non-hospital settings are susceptible to seeing shortages if migration developments reverse, in response to the report. 

The report known as for lawmakers to retain present nurses and start rising the pipeline starting with center and high-schoolers. It additionally really helpful an growth of nursing applications, however famous that faculties face issue in attracting instructors due to the comparatively low pay. 

State Rep. Rachel Prusak, a nurse practitioner who’s stepping down on the finish of her time period, famous through the listening to that she had taken a instructing place, which she stated pays “crap.”

She stated, “Now we have to determine this out.”

You possibly can attain Jake at [email protected] or through Twitter @jakethomas2009.