Proposed Plan / Solution
The certified nursing faculty shortage is one of the most serious issues, which medical educational facilities currently face. Faculty shortage negatively impacts the supply of nurses for nurse anesthesia education. Given the lack of professional medical personnel, as well as the need for expanding workplace opportunities for the nursing staff, education committees have been increasingly involved into developing and implementing different kinds of faculty retention and recruitment strategies, with the aim to guarantee effectiveness and objectivity of nursing educational programs.
To understand, whether and how faculty shortage programs can be resolved, CRNA has to analyze the drivers that stand behind the current faculty shortage. “One of the many factors that have contributed to the faculty shortage includes the aging of the present nursing faculty and an inadequate pool of younger faculty” (Starnes-Ott & Kremer, 2007).
That means that to resolve shortage issues, the education committee requires hiring younger staff or providing the current faculty members with better opportunities for further education and professional career. In the light of the growing demand for post-secondary education, and as a result, the growing demand for post-secondary teachers, young faculty staff should be offered better research opportunities. In other words, the better research opportunities are, the more likely are the faculty members to keep their jobs with particular educational program.
In this context, research opportunities may also provide the young staff with a chance for professional and career growth. Finally, education committees should be more attentive to the perceptions and attitudes which faculty staff holds towards the workplace culture. It is very probable, that clearer organizational guidelines and better cultural environment would help relief the burden of the present day shortage issues.
Certainly, such changes do not occur overnight, and to guarantee the effectiveness and relevance of all organizational procedures, education committees, universities, and educational facilities should possess the fullest information about what drives the current faculty shortage. “A web-supported survey on CRNA faculty recruitment and retention was conducted by the Education Committee in January 2006” (Starnes-Ott & Kremer, 2007).
The web-supported survey has become the first step toward identifying and addressing the major shortage challenges. However, none of the issues or requirements which respondents have identified in their survey had previously been implemented. As a result, it is not yet possible assess the positive (and / or negative) impact which these initiatives may produce on the quality of the nursing faculty staff in the long run.
Simultaneously, the results of web-based surveys go in line with previous findings, suggesting that educational grants, research opportunities, distance learning opportunities, and better organizational culture could potentially resolve the major portion of faculty shortage issues (Starnes-Ott & Kremer, 2007). In this context, a good plan to address the problem should contain several critical elements.
First, to reestablish recruitment and retention priorities for young CRNA educators, the latter should be offered better salary opportunities and prospects. This step is critical to attract talented nursing faculty staff. Second, the need for retaining young specialists should be emphasized. In this context, the faculty educators can be offered continuous online access to different types of educational resources, which would help them combine their workplace obligations with research.
In the light of the organizational pressures and burnouts, faculty staff should be given a chance to reevaluate and rewrite the existing rules and standards of educational performance in ways, which would make these rules clearer. Finally, the faculty should invest significant amount of financial and non-financial resources to develop and implement a new effective advertising campaign, to create a more attractive organizational image for the young specialists, who look for prospective employment.
Conclusion
Education committees place special emphasis on the role which advertising may play in attracting young staff. Advertising, however cannot solely resolve all faculty shortage issues. Without better salary and research opportunities, as well as a clearer set of organizational guidelines to which the new staff will need to adhere, CRNA will hardly be able to resolve its shortage issues in the nearest time.
References
Starnes-Ott, K. & Kremer, M.J. (2007). Recruitment and retention of nurse anesthesia
faculty: Issues and strategies. AANA Journal, 75 (1): 13-16.
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