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Nurse educators play a vital role in society, teaching, guiding, and acting as role models and mentors for the next generation of nurses. Despite the economic downturn, current estimates predict that in the next decade the U.S. will begin to experience one of the worst shortages of registered nurses in the nation’s history.
Unlike nurse shortages in the past, a rapidly aging population, a subsequent increased demand for RNs, plus an aging nursing workforce drive this nurse shortage, unparalleled in American nursing.
"The stability and quality of our nation`s health care rely heavily on a sufficient supply of appropriately educated and skilled nurses," according to Susan B. Hassmiller, R.N., Ph.D., F.A.A.N., senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The number of nursing graduates with bachelor’s and master’s degrees is failing to keep up with soaring demand, yet nursing schools across the nation are forced to turn away qualified applicants each year due to a growing shortage of Nurse Educators. Over the past several years, the deficit of nursing faculty has reached critical proportions as the current faculty workforce rapidly advances toward retirement and the pool of younger replacement Nurse Educators decreases.
The need for nurses with master`s and doctoral degrees to fill nursing faculty positions is critical, as more students are applying to nursing programs, but not enough Nurse Educators are available to meet the need.
Passing along your nursing knowledge and sharing the benefit of your experiences brings about a satisfaction and joy that transcends other benefits of the job. That says a lot in itself because the working conditions on a university campus aren’t bad, to say the least, and the salary’s not bad at all considering all the time off for school breaks, holidays, and between semesters which allow lots of time for long vacations or lucrative moonlighting.
Despite all the nice perks of university faculty life, nothing can compare with the inner satisfaction and delight that comes from helping your student nurses transition from hesitant newbies into confident skilled practitioners of the nursing profession.
It’s a gratifying experience to guide a new class through clinical and run across former students, now working in the hospital, who happily greet you and tell your students, that was my teacher. Twenty years from now when you need a nurse yourself, the nurse that cares for you just might be one of the very same nurses you taught, and you’ll know at the end of the day, you made a difference. A very real difference. A difference that will last for generations. Job satisfaction doesn’t get much better than that!
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