I’ve been in the nursing and nursing education field for over 40 years. While being a nurse educator is a rewarding and meaningful experience, it also opens my eyes to a growing threat in our healthcare system that policymakers must promptly address.
Across the United States, the story is the same: we are in the middle of a serious nursing shortage — and not just in our hospitals, doctors’ offices, or clinics. The pipeline that trains and prepares new nurses is struggling, and people outside the nursing profession don’t always see that side of the problem.
Here’s the truth: we have plenty of smart, capable people who want to become nurses. Every year, programs nationwide receive applications from eager students who are passionate, prepared, and ready to serve. And every year, those programs are forced to turn away too many of them. In 2024 alone, over 80,000 qualified applications were turned away because of programs having insufficient faculty, clinical placement sites, preceptors, or classroom space to accept every applicant that meets or exceeds its standards.
This problem is frustrating and heartbreaking. And it’s also completely preventable — especially if leaders in Washington more fully understood the challenges facing America’s nursing workforce and educators.
I applaud Senators Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Susan Collins (R-ME) for recognizing the urgency of this problem and championing the Train More Nurses Act (S. 547) in the U.S. Senate. This bipartisan bill aims to address the core of this issue. I urge lawmakers across Congress to support and pass this much-needed solution as quickly as possible.
As a former nursing educator/leader and now chief nursing officer of a nurse education technology company that supports over 60% of the nation’s prelicensure nursing programs, I hear from colleagues daily who are worried about the nursing workforce pipeline. Programs, big and small, rural and urban, are stretched thin. Experienced educators are retiring, and it’s hard to recruit new ones when faculty salaries can’t compete with what nurses earn in clinical roles. On top of that, some educators may have limited access to technology that can fill resource gaps and improve their efficiency and capacity. It’s no wonder schools are being forced to turn away qualified candidates.
The Train More Nurses Act would help address these challenges by directing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as the U.S. Labor Department, to conduct a review of nursing grant programs to identify opportunities to increase faculty at nursing schools nationwide, especially in underserved communities. This bill would also help strengthen career pathways for nurses who have more than 10 years of clinical experience to become faculty at schools of nursing.
Critically, the Train More Nurses Act would also support the long-term care community, a sector that is especially struggling because of the workforce shortage. In fact, the senior living and care sectors will need 660,000 more workers across the country by 2033 to meet the growing demand for long-term care. The Train More Nurses Act will help encourage and increase the nursing pipeline through pathways for licensed practical nurses (LPNs) – who are a crucial part of the long-term care workforce – to become registered nurses (RNs).
This bill isn’t about politics. It’s about addressing the nursing shortage that threatens to destabilize our entire healthcare system. It’s about ensuring that a student who wants to pursue a career in nursing isn’t needlessly turned away. And it’s about making sure those training the next generation of nurses have the support they need to continue doing this work.
We are burning out our current workforce while sidelining the next generation of nurses. That should alarm all of us.
To Congress: Passing the Train More Nurses Act is an essential step we can take to change this. It won’t solve everything overnight, but it will move us in the right direction — with data and strategy, we can position nursing programs to increase and expand enrollment while controlling student costs, incentivizing faculty, and graduating confident and competent nursing graduates.
We have passionate students ready to serve. We have experienced educators ready to teach. Let’s make sure our systems are ready to help them succeed.
Photo: asiseei, Getty Images
This post appears through the MedCity Influencers program. Anyone can publish their perspective on business and innovation in healthcare on MedCity News through MedCity Influencers. Click here to find out how.
