Even if we get enough coronavirus supplies, we don’t have enough nurses

Fighting the COVID-19 epidemic has revealed an abyss in our nation’s capacity to comprehensively respond to a global health emergency. In the South Sound it is beginning to feel like we are pretty much on our own to amass the resources needed to combat this disease.

But the long term threat for the months and years to come is just as important as the immediate threat of dried-up supply chains for test kits, protective equipment, beds and ventilators.

These technologies are useless if we do not have the nursing personnel to run them. Currently there aren’t enough nurses in training to meet the future demand.

A federal agency predicts that Washington will be short 7,000 Registered Nurses by 2025. More close to home, MultiCare Health System posted nearly 10,000 employment positions for RNs during 2017-2018.

Adding to the shortage is an aging workforce with almost one third of working nurses over the age of 55 and considering retirement.

This epidemic lays bare insufficiencies in our system for educating and employing nurses. Finding reinforcements to replace frontline nurses who must self-quarantine has led to health systems calling for retired and non-working nurses to meet the call for increasingly desperate healthcare needs.

COVID-19 is especially dangerous to seniors in assisted living. We might have been better prepared had we sufficient numbers of nurses already working in longterm-care facilities.

Yet a recent Washington Center for Nursing survey found staffing needs and nurse dissatisfaction were highest for those working in longterm care.

We still don’t know how well prepared we will be for the next few months when numbers of patients needing care will surge inside South Sound hospitals. We do know that hospital and clinic nurses face incredible burdens and personal risk during the months ahead.

And where is the re-supply when nurses burn out and leave the profession under this strain? We cannot rely on importing nurses from other states when the demand is increasing at all points of the compass.

We must expand our pre-licensure programs for nurses here in the South Sound and break the bottleneck on nurse training in our universities and community colleges. In 2017 alone, 56,000 eligible applicants were turned away from US schools for lack of available slots.

Last year the state provided funding to community colleges to increase the salaries of masters-prepared nurse faculty to expand the number of RNs in community college programs. This is a great start to address the bottleneck in the South Sound.

But in addition we desperately need state and philanthropic commitment to develop new nurse training programs in universities that serve the region.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security act became law on March 27. It includes $1.5 billion to bolster state and local public health efforts including testing, contact tracing and infection control to prevent the resurgence of the virus as we begin the gradual shift away from shelter in place.

Expanding the nursing workforce should be part of our state’s commitment to shore up our preparedness. It will take a bold community commitment to build out a comprehensive vision that can both deliver on the needed supply for nurses to address present and future health crises; and to unite with the state in spanning the abyss in workforce preparedness across America.

Robin Evans-Agnew and Denise Drevdahl teach at the School of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership at the University of Washington Tacoma.