Hoping to surmount the nationwide shortage of experienced registered nurses and nursing instructors, federal officials announced a $1.1 million grant last week to train new nursing teachers and mentors.
The grant -- which will increase the available resources for both nursing students and faculty -- is the first installment of more than $12 million earmarked for work force training in health care and biotechnology.
Upon receiving word about the federal funding, School of Nursing Dean Afaf Meleis said that she was "thrilled that the labor department issued solicitation for grant applicants" and expressed hope that the grant would have a great impact. She believes that such an impact will be felt at senior colleges and universities, as well as community colleges because the money will enable students from community colleges to be admitted to four-year colleges.
Meleis added that the grant will affect Penn specifically because it will allow nursing students from community colleges to enroll in the University's graduate program. An increase in nursing program enrollment would likely necessitate an increased number of faculty ? a much-needed improvement for the field of nursing.
"The country needs students, and for that it needs trained faculty first," Meleis said, calling the nursing instructor shortage a crisis.
The grant is meant to address the shortage of nursing instructors, which limits the number of nurses that can be trained. A small supply of nurses means that few have incentives to go to graduate school, since salaries for bedside nurses are already high.
This results in many nursing-school applicants being turned away because of the lack of resources to accommodate them.
Carol Cooke, a spokeswoman for the American Nurses Association, which pushed for the grant in Congress, said, "Nearly 33,000 nursing applicants had to be turned away from nursing school, largely because of [a lack of] nursing school faculty."
Cooke noted that there were other problems which caused nursing applicants to be turned away, among them inadequate classroom space and facilities, but she added that the chief reason was the shortage of faculty.
Since the budget proposed by the Bush administration for 2006 would have cut health-care funding by $1.5 billion, Cooke said, this increase in funding is especially welcome.
The ANA has "worked very hard with the Congress members to increase the grant," she added.
Of the money's allocation, Meleis said, "There's no doubt this will happen very fast," meaning that the number of nursing teachers and instructors is likely to rise in the near future.
Meleis added that the new funding will help promote equality in nursing education, "bridging the gap between community colleges and senior colleges particularly for students at a disadvantage for language [and] culture."
According to Meleis, the acute shortage of nurses currently effects both the United States and other parts of the world.
