Jeff Bingaman United States Senator from New Mexico

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman has renewed his effort to address the critical shortage of nurse faculty.

Because the average age of the workforce is near retirement, the nationwide nursing shortage is growing rapidly just as the health care needs of our nation’s aging population are increasing.  A 2006 Health Resources and Services Administration report estimated that the national nursing shortage would more than triple - to more than one million nurses - by the year 2020.  The report also predicts that all 50 states will experience nursing shortages by 2015.

Bingaman’s bill, the “Nurse Faculty and Physical Therapist Education Act of 2009”, would provide grants to nursing schools to help them increase enrollment and graduation from nursing doctoral programs.

“To solve our nation’s nursing shortage, we must first address the lack of nursing instructors,” Bingaman said.  “That’s exactly what this bill does.”

In New Mexico, nursing programs turned down almost half of qualified applicants, even though the Health Resources and Services Administration predicts that New Mexico will only be able to meet 64 percent of its demand for nurses by 2020.   In 2004 and 2005, New Mexico nursing schools could only accommodate 55 percent of qualified applicants due to the lack of adequate nursing faculty.

Bingaman’s bill, which he first introduced in 2007, also does the following:

• Authorizes funding to train nursing faculty in clinical geriatrics, so that more nursing students will be equipped to care for the country’s aging population.
• Authorizes a distance education pilot program to improve access to educational opportunities for nursing and physical therapy students.
• Calls for a study by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences which will recommend how to balance education, labor, and immigration policies to meet the demand for qualified nurses and physical therapists.