America’s Nursing Shortage has yet to Hit Home

The nation is facing a shortage of nurses, but Chapel Hill might not feel the effects of this shortage just yet. UNC Hospitals is doing what it can to ensure a steady rate of nursing graduates work locally. Officials hope admitting more students will help ease the state’s nursing shortage.

“She’s got her UNC hat on; ‘Go Tar Heels,’” said proud mother, Misty Dupree.

Her daughter Elizabeth Dupree is a month-and-a-half old and weights less than four pounds.

“She was born Dec. 8., 13 weeks early,” Dupree explained.

Despite a national nursing shortage, Dupree says her daughter received the attention she needed from the UNC nursing staff, and Elizabeth will be home by Valentine’s Day. If it were ten years from now, Elizabeth and her mother might not have gotten the same level of care. Health analysts predict that North Carolina will face a shortage of 9,000 nurses by 2015.

“The biggest number of nurses in the workforce are the baby-boomer generation, and the population cohorts that came after were smaller, and fewer of them chose to become nurses,” said Mary Tonges, chief nursing officer at UNC Hospitals.

“We’re holding our own and doing real well because we work so hard at it, but I think it will become increasingly challenging for everybody as the shortage increases,” Tonges said.

And to prepare for those shortages, the Board of Governors has asked the University’s School of Nursing to accept more applicants.

“With sufficient resources, we educate about 60 more students a year, and that’s what we plan on doing,” said Sonda Oppewal, Associate Dean of the UNC School of Nursing.

And Dupree might be one of them.

“Having been in here and knowing my love for biology, I have actually considered and am going back to school to study neo-natal care,” Dupree told Carolina Week.

For every student the nursing school accepts, officials have to turn away four qualified applicants. The School says it needs more resources to enroll those extra students. Last year the state legislature denied a request by the Board of Governors for more funding. School officials hope the legislature will reconsider their request again this year.