One figure is 5%. The other is 32,323. One figure is good. The other, not so good. Earlier this month, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), released preliminary survey data that showed trends–some positive and some negative–in the world of future nursing.

Five percent (the good number) represents the rise in nursing school enrollment from 2005 to 2006. It’s the sixth straight year that enrollment has increased at nursing schools in the United States, which is significant as more nurses will help curb the severe nursing shortage that is quickly approaching from the horizon. Before 2001, enrollment numbers actually dropped for five consecutive years.

Thirty-two thousand (the bad number) is the approximate number of qualified applicants who were turned away from nursing programs. The crippling factor: a lack of nursing educators. That number comes from responses supplied by 449 schools surveyed by the AACN. A bright spot, and perhaps the only one when looking at such a high number, is that the amount of rejections actually decreased from last year (37,514). But in the three previous years, the number of denials never crested 30,000. In fact, only 3,600 students were turned away in 2002.

To combat this worrying trend, the AACN is taking some of the following steps:

• Working with other nursing groups to garner more support for federal funding for nursing education. Many of the programs are aimed at nursing faculty, in hopes of creating a more appetizing view of the world of academia.
• Offering a Faculty Development Institute this coming February to, once again, recruit and retain nursing faculty.
• Working with The California Endowment, a private health foundation that provides grants to community-based organizations, to create a minority faculty scholarship to help increase the number of nurse educators from different backgrounds

Over the past few years, it has become apparent that steps such as these need to be taken to prevent a devastating workforce shortage. By 2020, it has been estimated that more than 1,000,000 new nurses will be needed in the United States healthcare system in order to fill the void.

Source: American Association of Colleges of Nursing press release