The magnitude of America's health-care shortage is immense: Unless serious efforts are made today, there will not be enough nurses to meet growing health-care needs. In other words, the U.S. must attract more students to nursing careers--and ensure the workforce reflects the many unique and vibrant communities across the country.
Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), in particular, are vital. Through one-year-long diploma or associate's-level programs, students learn the fundamentals of nursing and gain hands-on clinical experience providing care to patients, preparing them for the role they play in hospitals, doctors' offices, long-term care, and other settings.
Additionally, LPN degrees are a critical pathway for economic advancement and career fulfillment. They are also a vital way for attracting health-care professionals that better mirror the wonderful diversity of American society, which research shows improves care and access for patients.
Yet, right now, people must build a complicated web of resources to afford nursing school. In rural Arkansas, where I taught in an LPN program, I saw both the heartwarming and the heartbreaking firsthand. Nursing education became a fulcrum that provided a secure job that lifted people out of poverty, gave them a sense of value in the community, helped meet critical rural health-care needs, and brought honor and pride to people.
But it was a semester-by-semester game that students struggled to win.
If we want to attract enough people to this rewarding career and expand diversity in the ranks of students and graduates, we must extend support to students and ensure nursing education is affordable.
Consider a former student, "Maggie," whose experience illustrates the challenges many students face today.
Maggie had a difficult upbringing and struggled to make ends meet as a young single parent. She worked as a nursing assistant when she was accepted to the LPN program at her local community college. To attend school, Maggie had to pay tuition, buy books and supplies, purchase gas to go back and forth, and obtain child care for her son.
Maggie was a resourceful, strong woman who identified where the resources were in her community to help her succeed. She cobbled together means to pay for living expenses through public assistance, food stamps, and Section 8 housing. She received scholarships, Pell grants, and student loans to pay for school. She was able to get Medicaid. Because Maggie was a first-generation college student and met income guidelines, she received Federal TRIO Student Support Services. And she received support in the form of help with college costs, child care, transportation, and Internet access from Arkansas Career Pathways.
Maggie built a delicate and complex web of resources by herself. She couldn't afford to lose any of them.
By the time Maggie came into our program, her team of teachers did their best to help her succeed both in and outside the classroom. Recognizing that socioeconomic stressors can negatively impact students' academic preparedness and engagement in the classroom, I strongly believe in utilizing tools and technology to help students like Maggie pass their prerequisites, practice their clinical judgment, and study for and pass their licensure exam.
And that's just what Maggie did.
After graduating, Maggie entered an associate degree LPN to RN program. After becoming an RN, she went to work in a mental health facility where her employer helped her with tuition reimbursement as she pursued her bachelor's in nursing.
She messaged me one day to ask if I thought she should apply for the bachelor's to nursing doctorate program at the medical center. "Yes, yes, yes!" I answered emphatically.
Dr. Maggie now provides mental health services as a psychiatric nurse clinician in a critically underserved rural area of Arkansas. I am so proud of Maggie and all the students like her.
We need to ensure we have more Maggies in the world by extending support to students looking for a sustainable pathway to move their careers and lives forward.
Policymakers can help realize this goal. When lawmakers consider legislation to support nursing education, I encourage them to have the vision and determination to build the village so students like Maggie have the infrastructure in place to succeed. So they can afford their education. So they can become nurses and serve their communities.
With inflation rising and more and more students feeling academically unprepared to enter nursing, there has never been a more important time for government, health care, higher education, and community stakeholders to invest in the nurses we desperately need.
It's time to place the cornerstone by making nursing education more affordable and ensuring access to the tools to help them advance.
Alison DeLong, MS, RN, is the team lead for NCLEX Services at ATI Nursing Education. She resides in North Little Rock.