An unlikely coalition of major organizations and funding has formed to address the nursing shortage. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the AARP Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are teaming with other groups nationwide to renew a focus on recruiting more new nurses. This coalition will also tout the importance of the inclusion of nurses in any major changes to the nation’s failing health care system.
Nursing care touches all aspects of health care and health improvement in a person’s life. It makes sense to include them in any plans to change and improve the U.S. health care system. The group is citing the National League of Nursing report that says that 99,000 qualified nursing school applicants were rejected from their local nursing programs because of a lack of capacity to educate them.
With the shortage of RNs projected to continue to increase over the next ten years, there is no time like the present to focus on helping to recruit new nurse educators into that field and increase funding for nurse educator salaries to bring them into line with other nurse leadership salaries.
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