VA, Universities Partner to Address Nursing Shortage

It is a known fact that availability of nursing staff has a significant impact on patient care outcomes. With the decreased enrollment of students into nursing schools, the nursing shortage has potential to get much worse before it gets better.

Two major causes behind the nursing shortage are the availability of nurse faculty and decreased enrollment into nursing schools. Clinical care professionals in the Veterans Health Administration are concerned about these causes as well as two other VA health missions – education and research.

In 1963, the Veterans Affairs Nursing Service was first in the profession to establish a position for doctorally prepared nurse researchers, formalizing the research function within the service. Today, 44 nurse principal investigators conduct research full time within VA hospitals, focusing their studies and investigations on improving patient care. Many more VA nurses are involved as collaborators in specific research projects.

The VA believes it is imperative that enrollment in nursing schools increase to have an adequate work force to meet patient-care demands currently and in the future. Nursing faculty are aging and their availability is decreasing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is salaries. Recognizing that there is a need for nurses to teach as well as provide clinical care, the Houston VA Medical Center and local universities are taking steps to address these problems.

In 1999, the VA proposed new nurse-qualification standards and launched an education assistance initiative to support these new standards. The VA committed $50 million to assist VA nurses seeking baccalaureate degrees in nursing and adopted new performance standards requiring a four-year degree for registered nurses by 2005.

Emphasis on education in the VA system has had a positive impact and many of the nurses employed at the Houston VA Medical Center now have either master’s or doctoral degrees.

Just recently, the hospital’s nursing staff members were given the time and opportunity to serve as primary nursing faculty for nursing students performing their clinical rotations at the facility. These VA staff nurses are committed and take this additional teaching responsibility very seriously. The VA nurses have completed orientation for their new responsibilities at local universities and began their additional duties last September. In addition, an increasing number of Houston VA Medical Center nursing staff are receiving faculty appointments, and continue to perform clinical functions in their respective hospital roles.

VA nursing has a proud history and the Houston VA Medical Center continues to build upon that legacy in an effort to recruit a qualified work force to care for patients.

For more than 50 years, the hospital’s staff has provided clinical training for health care professionals through affiliations with Baylor College of Medicine and 85 other educational and research institutions. Since 1985, the year that the Houston VA Medical Center became a Texas Medical Center institution, hospital staff members have and continue to serve on various TMC committees that contribute to improving patient care and hospital operations.

E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu
URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/05_01_03/page_29.html