September 9, 2008
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 1.2 million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2014. Of this number, federal analysts project that more than 703,000 will be newly created RN positions that will account for 40 percent of all new jobs in the health care sector. By 2020, federal estimates indicate a shortfall of 1 million nurses. The Alabama Hospital Association estimates the demand for nurses in the state will jump 25 percent over the next five years.
To help fill this gap, three faculty members from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing have received grants totaling $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
Teena McGuinness received an Advanced Education Nursing Award, a three-year grant, $793,384, "Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners in the Rural Deep South," from the HRSA Division of Nursing.
Beth Stullenbarger received a Nursing Workforce Diversity Award, a three-year grant, $867,265, "Enrichment for Academic Success in Nursing," from the HRSA Division of Nursing
Anne Turner Henson received a Leadership Education in Child Health Nursing Award, a five-year grant, $896,855, "Building Capacity and Leadership in Child Health Nursing," from the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Federal Consolidated Programs.
The "Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners in the Rural Deep South," project, under McGuinness' direction, is designed to increase access to mental health care by increasing the number of primary mental health care providers in rural and underserved areas of Alabama and Mississippi.
Through the grant, a new psychiatric nurse practitioner program will be implemented at the UAB School of Nursing to prepare master's students to provide psychiatric nursing care to individuals, families, or populations in primary, acute, or tertiary settings. One of the objectives is to develop an online psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner program that will be available to bachelor's degree-prepared nurses from rural, medically underserved counties in Alabama and Mississippi. Because this will be a distance accessible program, students from these rural and underserved areas will be able to stay and work near their homes, families, and communities, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will practice where they are most needed.
McGuinness said, "This grant is important because 64 of 67 counties in Alabama have been designated mental health professional shortage areas by the federal government. And there is no health without mental health. This program will educate nurses to become psychiatric nurse practitioners and work in one of the most underserved areas of health care: rural counties where mental health professionals are in short supply."
The Nursing Workforce Diversity Award will support the Enrichment for Academic Nursing Success (EANS) program. EANS, for which Stullenbarger is the principal investigator, is designed to create a sustainable pipeline of minority and disadvantaged students to enter the UAB School of Nursing and graduate, entering the nursing workforce. The goals of the program are to increase the number of culturally competent, baccalaureate-prepared nurses in the nursing workforce; offer faculty development for nursing faculty in Alabama each year to increase their knowledge of cultural competency and strategies for working with disadvantaged and minority nursing students; develop a pre-entry to nursing program for students in three Alabama high schools, two in Alabama's Black Belt and one in Dekalb County; develop an enriched pre-entry curriculum to nursing program for selected students at Lawson State Community College and UAB; and award scholarship and stipend money to qualified minority and/or disadvantaged students who are pre-entry high school students, college pre-entry students, and students within UAB's nursing program.
Stullenbarger said, "We are delighted to receive this grant because it will help the state of Alabama through the development of a nursing workforce pipeline beginning in our high schools. In addition, grant activities are focused on providing opportunities for students who come from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds and implementing strategies to help them become registered nurses.
Building Capacity and Leadership in Child-Health Nursing, under the direction of Turner-Henson, will train nursing doctoral students to become child-health nursing faculty as leaders to educate child health nurses to provide culturally competent, family-centered, community-based care for children and families in a wide geographic area. The program also is designed to produce child-health nurse researchers who can conduct culturally appropriate, interdisciplinary investigations of child health topics with a community-based focus. There are four avenues through which this will be accomplished: instituting graduate level and post-graduate level training; coordinating the considerable resources of the university/area/region to develop a training program that focuses on preparing child-health nursing faculty; developing and implementing continuing education programs in child health for nurses and other health professionals in the region and nation; and pursuing child health research efforts integrating biological, developmental, mental health, social, economic, educational, and/or environmental concerns within a preventive, public health framework.
Turner-Henson said, "Currently, the U.S. faces a critical shortage of nursing faculty, particularly faculty with the skills, knowledge, research and leadership abilities to prepare our future providers and leaders in child-health nursing. Coupled with that, the U.S. faces changing trends in children's health, increasing rates of child-onset adult conditions and decreasing numbers of child-health nursing providers. Ultimately, we want to improve the health status of children and families, particularly those in the southeast by building capacity and leadership in child-health nursing faculty."
"We are proud of our three program directors and their respective teams who have worked so adeptly to get these projects funded and off the ground," said UAB School of Nursing Dean Doreen Harper, Ph.D. "The nursing faculty shortage is a complex, national issue and has been called the perfect storm of health care resources. A key factor is the aging nurse faculty, as it is estimated as many as 40 percent may retire in the next 10 years. Nationally, nursing schools continue to turn away qualified student applicants because of faculty constraints. These three new training grants will help the UAB School of Nursing enhance nursing education at the baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral levels, while helping put more nurses at the bedside and in the classroom, benefitting the state, region and patients we serve."