UVA Nursing Dean Jeanette Lancaster Testifies Before Congress
Date released: 01 Mar 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:Dory Hulse Director of Communications 434-924-0085 or doryhulse@virginia.edu
UVA NURSING DEAN JEANETTE LANCASTER TESTIFIES BEFORE CONGRESS
President’s Proposed Budget Cuts Would Worsen Nation’s Nursing Shortage
Charlottesville, VA, March 18, 2008 – On March 13, Jeanette Lancaster, PhD, RN, FAAN, testified before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies to advocate for support of nursing education in the upcoming federal budget. Lancaster is Sadie Heath Cabaniss Professor of Nursing and Dean of the University of Virginia School of Nursing and President of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).
Speaking on behalf of the AACN, she presented the organization’s FY 2009 funding priorities seeking $200 million for the Nursing Workforce Development Programs authorized under Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act.
Dean Lancaster cited the decade-long shortage of Registered Nurses already affecting health care delivery in the United States and explained the necessity of acting immediately to prevent even worse ramifications as aging baby boomers increasingly impact the nation’s health care system. More than 1.2 million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2014, but the supply of nurses is not growing at a pace to meet those needs. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) projects that nursing schools will need to increase the number of their graduates by 90% to adequately address the shortage. A shortage of nursing faculty is the number one reason for nursing schools across the country turning away more than 40,000 qualified applicants last year. The UVA School of Nursing received 404 applications for only 57 spaces in the Fall 2008 semester; for the past three years, the School has been able to accept only 14-15% of applicants.
Title VIII programs, the largest source of federal funding for nursing education, are a proven solution to past nursing shortages and are viewed as a potentially significant help for the current problem. However, while expressing gratitude for the Subcommittee’s past support for Title VIII programs, Lancaster sounded the alarm about two major concerns with current and proposed funding.
The Nurse Faculty Loan Program, dedicated to educating future nursing faculty, is an excellent program that provides cancellation of up to 85% of their educational loans for students who agree to teach in a school of nursing. It is, however, seriously underfunded at one of the lowest levels of all Title VIII programs ($7.86 million).
In addition, Lancaster is greatly concerned that President Bush’s FY 2009 budget proposal has marked for elimination Advanced Education Nursing (AEN) grants that support programs to prepare graduate-level nurses to be primary care providers and nurse educators. In FY 2007, this program supported 16,000 students – eliminating it would be a major setback in overcoming the nursing faculty shortage and the nursing shortage, especially in rural and underserved areas of the country. Indeed, Lancaster who is internationally recognized as a leader in nursing, nursing education, and healthcare workforce policy has personally seen the benefit of this program, noting in her testimony, “I am a product of Title VIII funding for my master’s degree in psychiatric mental health nursing.”
According to Lancaster, the committee asked almost no questions of any of those who testified. The chair did explain to each how much the President’s proposed budget would cut their programs and Dean Lancaster explained that such a drastic cut “would nearly redline the support for nursing faculty and nurse practitioners, both of which are so key to our health care system.” She frames her deep concern by adapting the words of UVA founder Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man…” adding that “without faculty there is no capacity to educate nurses. With all the pending faculty retirements in nursing education, the issue will not be one of increasing enrollments, but the struggle to sustain enrollment at current levels.”
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is the national voice for America's baccalaureate- and higher-degree nursing education programs. AACN's educational, research, governmental advocacy, data collection, publications, and other programs work to establish quality standards for bachelor's- and graduate-degree nursing education, assist deans and directors to implement those standards, influence the nursing profession to improve health care, and promote public support of baccalaureate and graduate education, research, and practice in nursing— the nation's largest health care profession.
The University of Virginia School of Nursing stands among the top 5% in the nation, ranked 19th by US News & World Report; two of its graduate programs are currently listed in the U.S. News Top Ten. With a vigorous research program that includes studies in rural health care and disparities, oncology, gerontology, complementary therapies and nursing history, the School has implemented new programs and strategies to address the national nursing shortage and the concurrent need for more highly educated nurses to deliver increasingly complex health care. For more information about the UVA School of Nursing and its programs, visit www.nursing.virginia.edu.
Jeanette also provided the Subcommittee with a fuller written report availible here