Gov. Martin O?Malley included $8.8 million in his budget for an ongoing program to expand the number of nursing graduates in Maryland.
But he did not fund the additional $11 million to $34 million state hospitals and nursingschools were hoping to get for a new initiative to double the number of nurses educated in Maryland by boosting the number and salaries of faculty.
“We?re still hoping that funds will be redirected to this initiative,” said Jessica Ronan, Maryland Hospital Association spokeswoman.
“We will have over 10,000 vacancies for nursing jobs” in coming years, Pegeen Townsend, legislative policy director for the Maryland Hospital Association, told a Senate committee Wednesday.
“We are at capacity and beyond,” said Carol Eustis, dean of health professions at the Community College of Baltimore County, the largest nursing program in Maryland. In 2006, across the state, nursing programs turned away 1,900 qualified applicants. “Students are ready to fill the gap,” Eustis said.
“We are experiencing a public health crisis in Maryland,” said Carolyn Yocum of the University of Maryland School of Nursing. The biggest problem is recruiting and retaining qualified faculty to staff the clinically intensive training for nurses. “I do not have the adequate number of faculty,” Yocum said.
The $8.8 million nursing program O?Malley funded, financed by a charge on hospital rates, is used to prepare for nursing faculty, help retain nursing students in the program and help other health professionals transition into nursing, according to Paula Fitzwater, grants administrator at the Maryland Higher Education Commission.
The new money for the nursing initiative called “Who Will Care?” would be used to boost salaries for nursing faculty above the $75,000 current average. Currently, nursing graduates with a two-year associate degree “will make more than my nursing faculty,” said Beth Anne Batturs, head of nursing at Anne Arundel Community College.
The proposal calls for a combination of public and private funding that would be sustained in future years by the savings hospitals would gain by reducing their use of temporary staffing.
