Are there enough nurses in North Carolina? What patients should know
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Projection estimated a 12,000 nurse shortage by 2033. NC’s pipeline coverage is 6.99%.
- Surveys show 48% witnessed workplace violence, and 23% planned retirement.
- Leaders say lower faculty pay compared with clinical roles hinder program expansion
As North Carolinian hospitals celebrate National Nurses Week, America is facing a national shortage of nursing staff.
National Nurses Week kicked off Wednesday, May 6 and wraps up on Tuesday May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale. She opened the first secular nursing school.
Amid the yearly celebration, nurses are leaving the profession due to burnout, violence or retirement, and there aren’t enough people to replace them.
National nursing shortage
North Carolina Nurses Association President Bonnie Meadows has been a nurse for over 20 years. She said the workplace has changed throughout the years, and the patients have too.
“I can see the evolution of the care we provided back when I came in in 2004 versus the amount of care we provide now, patients are sicker, and the acuity (care needs) of those patients is much higher,” Meadows said.
She said many patients lack access to primary care providers, or have chronic health conditions such as diabetes and heart failure.
She said that when she entered the workforce, jobs were plentiful. Around the 2008 recession, there were few jobs as nurses clung to the positions they had. Now, some of the workforce is aging out, leaving gaps.
“Many nurses are retiring, and that opens the door for many new graduate nurses to be able to come into the workforce. And so that’s truly when you can see the ebb and flow of the shortage,” Meadows said. “It is a revolving door especially during this time, because we have a lot of early gen X-ers and still some baby boomers who are retiring.”
In 2022, 23% of nurses said they planned to retire in the next five years, according to the 2022 National Sample Survey of Nurses. At the same time, a rapidly aging population signals a need for more healthcare workers.
North Carolina nursing shortage
In 2021, a shortage of 12,000 nurses was projected in North Carolina by 2033. However, the North Carolina Nurses Association notes that the data used in the projection was collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely exacerbated both burnout and early retirement.
A recent report from the University of West Alabama measuring the where the pipeline of new registered nurses is growing nationally shows North Carolina’s nursing pipeline coverage at 6.99% — significantly lower than neighboring Tennessee and Virginia. Strong pipeline coverage means the state is training a significant number of new nurses compared to the size of the existing registered nurse workforce. The highest pipeline coverage is in Utah at 48.7%. According to the report, North Carolina is No. 37 in the country, and below the national average for coverage. South Carolina is facing a comparable shortage, ranking No. 38.
Some specialties face greater shortages than others. Nearly all (94) of North Carolina’s 100 counties face mental health professional shortages, according to the University of North Carolina.
A 2024 report by the North Carolina Institute of Medicine projected a 49% shortfall in North Carolina’s long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes, by 2033.
What’s being done?
In March, the University of North Carolina announced it had expanded its nursing program by 13% in response to the lack of professionals. A new nursing school facility will open in 2027 to accommodate for projected program growth.
Meadows said that a major issue is that fewer nurses are pursuing doctoral degrees required to teach, making it difficult to expand nursing programs. She said that nurses make more in clinical settings than as faculty.
“The first thing to do would be to make sure that nursing faculty have enough pay to be able to make that step into the academic setting and be able to still keep up with the lifestyle that they had when they were in the clinical setting, to be able to open doors for more people who are interested in nursing to be admitted into the schools,” Meadows said.
Meadows also said that burnout and cultural issues need to be addressed to keep people in nursing and draw people into the profession. In 2022, the group conducted a survey in which 48% of nurses self-reported having witnessed violence at work. When asked about mental wellbeing on a scale of 1-10, (1 meaning no impact and 10 meaning ready to leave the profession due to burnout), a third of respondents chose 8, 9, or 10.
“We need to work on nurse burnout, so that (nurses) are not leaving so quickly,” Meadows said. “When we’re looking at nurse burnout and how we can impact the current work culture, that also includes looking at technology and seeing how we nurses can influence what’s being built in the technology space, in order to say ‘this is how you can help us to do our job better,’ and so that you can reduce the workload of the nurse and be able to really focus on patient care.”
