Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson yesterday joined a bipartisan group of senators in introducing legislation to expand educational opportunities in the areas of nursing and physical therapy.

“We currently face critical shortages in both the civilian and military health care systems for qualified nurses and physical therapists,” said Nelson. “Congress has taken steps to encourage students to enter these careers, but we now need the faculty and resources to train all these prospective health care providers.”

The U.S. Department of Labor has designated nursing and physical therapy as occupations for which there is a national shortage, set only to increase as our aging population requires increasingly complex care. The American Association of Colleges and Nursing (AACN) reported that 42,886 qualified applicants were denied admission to nursing baccalaureate and graduate programs in 2006, with faculty shortages cited as a main hurdle.

Nebraska, in particular, is experiencing a serious nursing shortage that will become acute in the years ahead. According to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Nursing, the Nebraska shortage of registered nurses is predicted to grow from the current shortage of 6% to 30% by the year 2020. Yet the UNMC College of Nursing turns away 30% of qualified applicants each year because of lack of faculty. With an average age of 53, the UNMC College of Nursing faculty will be retiring in record numbers in the next 10 years. This problem is aggravated because Nebraska only has 16 nursing schools, a low number compared to other states.

Shortages of physical therapists are just as severe. According the Rural Health Advisory Commission in the Nebraska Office of Rural Health, in 2007, 29 of Nebraska’s rural counties; almost one-third of the 93 total counties, were identified as state designated shortage areas relative to the availability of physical therapy services.

Nelson joined Senators Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and John Kerry of Massachusetts in introducing legislation to help alleviate these shortages. The Nurse Faculty and Physical Therapist Education Act of 2007 would:

Establish grants for nursing schools to provide them with the ability to enhance recruitment and retention of faculty, with the overall goal of increasing enrollment and graduation rates.
Expand learning opportunities by creating nursing and physical therapy distance education pilot projects.
Create geriatric career awards for nursing faculty to specialize in clinical geriatrics.

“As Dean of a college of nursing, I am looking at the elements of a perfect storm: an aging faculty, a wave of retirements in the next decade, increasing competition in recruiting new faculty, a small pipeline of masters and doctoral students who are willing to consider a teaching career given poor teaching salaries, and a mandate to accept ever more applicants into undergraduate nursing programs that are chronically under-funded by state legislatures,” said Virginia Tilden, Dean of the UNMC College of Nursing. “I am very grateful to Senator Nelson for his foresight in introducing this important legislation that will help divert this storm.”

“The demand for physical therapists will continue to rise due to the aging of the population, the expanding size of the elderly population, the increased number of individuals living with chronic diseases, and the emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention,” said Kyle P. Meyer, Associate Dean, School of Allied Health Professions, UNMC. “By promoting the development of distance education pilot projects, this legislation offers a resourceful approach for increasing accessibility to physical therapy education for students from rural communities, along with the promise of increasing physical therapist practitioners for underserved rural areas.”

“Our population is getting older and there are greater and greater strains on our health care resources. Unfortunately, the practitioner supply is not meeting the demands,” said Nelson. “This legislation will provide an important boost to our efforts to ensure that we have the nurses and physical therapists we need to care for patients.”