JAN. 23, 2002 | Legislation to recruit more nurses needs strong public support now, U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-AR) told a crowd at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) yesterday.

The mounting shortage of nurses in Arkansas is “a real crisis,” UAMS Chancellor I. Dodd Wilson, M.D., said. Hospitals in the Little Rock area currently have approximately 374 nurse vacancies. That figure does not include nursing homes or hospitals in other parts of the state, he said. Yet as fewer students enroll in the nursing college, UAMS is graduating fewer new nurses each year.

”We can’t run our hospital without nurses,” Chancellor Wilson said.

Health care leaders fear that nursing schools will be unable to train enough new nurses to replace retiring nurses, creating a shortage that will become increasingly severe as the “baby boom” generation ages and needs more nursing care.

The U.S. Senate and U.S. House must reach a compromise soon on two versions of a bill to encourage students to enter nursing if the law is to take effect this fiscal year, Sen. Hutchinson told approximately 200 nurses, nursing students, and nursing educators.

Sen. Hutchinson praised Dean Linda C. Hodges, Ed.D., of the UAMS College of Nursing for helping lead the campaign for federal support of nursing education.

”You have really impacted the national debate,” he told her. A Congressional field hearing which UAMS hosted in April was an important early event in the campaign for the Senate bill he sponsored, he said.

Sen. Hutchinson also praised state Sen. Brenda Gullett (D-Pine Bluff) for chairing the Arkansas Legislative Commission on Nursing.

According to Sen. Hutchinson’s web site, the Senate version of the bill (S. 1864), the proposed Nurse Reinvestment Act, includes provisions to encourage individuals to enter the nursing profession, to provide continued education and opportunities for advancement within the profession, and to bolster the number of nurse faculty to teach at our nursing schools.  

Specifically, the bill would establish a Nurse Service Corps offering financial assistance to individuals for nurse education in exchange for two years of service in a nurse shortage area. Similar incentives are offered for nurses to achieve master or doctoral degrees to teach in schools of nursing. For nurses in the field, the bill offers opportunities to receive specialty and long-term care training and to advance within the profession through career ladder programs.