As the baby boomer generation gets older, there will be an increase in the amount of nurses needed, but a decrease in the number of nurses with baccalaureate degrees. This growing population of patients will require more geriatric training to be incorporated into the nursing curriculum. A main contributor to the increasing shortage is the lack of qualified nurse educators. The introduction of the Nurse Education, Expansion, and Development Act of 2009, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, combats these issues at a federal level.
There are nine components to this act of which include:
- Establishing or significantly expanding an accelerated baccalaureate degree nursing program designed to graduate new nurses in 12 to 18 months.
- Establishing cooperative interdisciplinary training between schools of nursing and other specified health related fields.
- Increasing admissions, enrollment, and retention of qualified individuals who are financially disadvantaged.
- Increasing enrollment of minority and diverse student populations.
- Increasing enrollment of new graduate baccalaureate nursing students in graduate programs that educate nurse faculty members.
- Developing post-baccalaureate residency programs to prepare nurses for practice in specialty areas where nursing shortages are more severe.
- Increasing integration of geriatric content into the core curriculum.
- A discussion of the master's degree and doctoral degree programs that are successful in placing graduates as faculty in schools of nursing.
- An examination of compensation disparities throughout the nursing profession and between higher education instructional faculty generally and higher education instructional nursing faculty.
