West Virginia Press Association
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia University School of Nursing is working to help the students of today become the nursing educators of tomorrow.
The nursing workforce shortage is well-known across the nation; however, the nursing faculty shortage is a lesser-known part of the equation. Advanced faculty age, a wave of retirements and too few nurses pursuing advanced nursing degrees are among the top factors contributing to the faculty shortage.
WVU School of Nursing Dean Tara Hulsey says obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree is one of the first steps in combatting the shortage.
“As the highest entry level degree into the nursing field, a BSN prepares graduates to provide higher level patient care at the bedside, and it also establishes a path forward for nurses to pursue higher education to become advanced practice providers or nurse educators,” Hulsey said.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s 2023-24 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing report stated that U.S. nursing schools turned away more than 65,000 qualified applications from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2023 “due to an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints.” As part of the survey, nursing schools cited faculty shortages as the top reason for not being able to accept the applicants into the programs.
“The WVU School of Nursing has fortunately not faced faculty shortages detrimental to student enrollment, but challenges could arise in the future without an adequate pipeline in place, especially for campuses located in the rural parts of the state,” Hulsey said. “This is a cyclical effect — without enough baccalaureate-prepared nurses to pursue educator roles — there are in turn not enough faculty members to educate future BSN students.”
To help address this, senior Nursing students are given an opportunity to work alongside their clinical instructor to help educate sophomore students as part of the Clinical Assistant Program within the BSN degree at WVU. This mentoring approach not only provides peer-to-peer learning opportunities, but also exposes senior students to the role of the nurse educator. Since the program’s inception in 2020, many students have expressed interest in pursuing their master’s degree to become a nurse educator.
“Study after study clearly shows that patients cared for by baccalaureate-prepared nurses experience better outcomes, lower mortality rates, and lower failure-to-rescue rates,” Hulsey said.
Another way in which the WVU School of Nursing is tackling this issue is by offering multiple avenues for students to achieve their BSN. Campus locations offering the traditional BSN include Beckley, Keyser and Morgantown. The Accelerated BSN program, offered to students who already have a bachelor’s degree in another field, is taught at the Bridgeport and Morgantown campuses. The LPN to BSN program, the only in the state of West Virginia, is the newest program offering at the Keyser Campus.
The WVU School of Nursing also has partnerships with 11 community colleges for RN to BSN transfer agreements. These agreements provide students the affordability and proximity of attending a community college, with the opportunity to seamlessly transfer into a fully online RN to BSN program with WVU.
In The Institute of Medicine’s The Future of Nursing report, experts called for increasing the number of baccalaureate-prepared nurses in the workforce to at least 80% by 2020. As of May 2024, the U.S. is behind that goal by 11%, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. With roughly 4.7 million nurses employed, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, that’s a shortage of more than 500,000 baccalaureate-prepared nurses.
“I am hopeful we can get back on track nationally toward reaching that goal,” Hulsey said. “But we have an opportunity to be a part of the solution, and that’s exactly what we’re doing at the WVU School of Nursing. We want to provide every possibility for students to advance personally and professionally, which will in turn help support the nursing faculty shortage.”
