Boost Capacity in Nursing Education

The nursing faculty shortage is driven by multiple factors, including the comparatively older age of nursing faculty and low compensation for nurse-educators in comparison to practicing nurses. Nurse practitioners who owned their own practice earned an average of $94,313 in 2003, compared with nursing professors, who earned an average of only $61,452. New federal funding to nursing schools to support increases in nursing faculty salaries may help address faculty retention and help schools fill faculty vacancies. Other strategies, such as streamlining prerequisites for graduate study in nursing and utilizing new models for teaching nursing students may also produce additional capacity within the nation’s schools of nursing.

For more on this topic, please see:

• The Health Care Delivery System: A Blueprint for Reform