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Nurses Up the Hiring Ante

 |  By Chelsea Rice  
   May 13, 2013

A federal report on nursing workforce trends, a nationwide legislative push to change scope-of-practice laws for nurse practitioners, and a legal reminder about the management of healthcare workers with hepatitis B round out the week's news.

Recruiting, retaining, and managing nurses with finesse has never been more important. As a group, these healthcare workers are better educated and more politically active than ever before.

So the release last week of the Health Resources and Services Administration National Center for Health Workforce Analysis report is as timely as it is illuminating. The U.S. Nursing Workforce: Trends in Supply and Education reports significant progress since 2001 in the expanding numbers and rising education level of the nation's nurses.

Here's a snapshot:

  • 500,000 nurses are expected to retire by 2020;
  • 1.2 million nurses are needed to fill their void;
  • The number of registered nurses has grown 24%;
  • LPNs have increased by 14%;
  • More than twice the amount of nursing school graduates in 2011 passed the national licensure (NCLEX-RN) examination than did a decade ago

More nurses, and more educated nurses is better for healthcare and better for hiring managers. But this stat, an indicator of rising healthcare costs for this group of employees, may be of particular interest to employers:

  • The average age of nurses has increased slightly, and about one-third of the nursing workforce is older than 50

NP's scope-of-practice fight continues

This week, the California Senate Appropriations committee hears a bill that would increase nurse practitioners' authority to care for patients without physician supervision.

The bill presented Monday would first remove the requirement of physician supervision from the existing scope of practice laws, and would expand the tasks APRNs are authorized to perform independently. Those tasks would include examining, diagnosing, and writing prescriptions for patients.

Fifteen other states are considering similar legislation that would expand APRNs to full practice authority (CT, IL, KS, KY, MA, MI, MN, MO, NJ, NY, NV, WV). Delaware and Pennsylvania are planning legislation for later this year. In Minnesota, nursing leaders are enlisting nursing students in the policy fight.

To date, full practice authority licensure laws for APRNs are active in one-third of the United States.

Update: Hepatitis B in healthcare workers

Finally, a news story about a legal settlement between a medical student and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey highlights a sensitive issue between some healthcare workers and employers.

Although there have been no transmissions of hepatitis B reported in the United States from primary care providers, clinicians, medical or dental students, residents, nurses, or other health care providers to patients since 1991, potential hires with hepatitis B face unlawful discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"As many as 1.4 million Americans have chronic hepatitis B. It's not clear how many of them are health practitioners. But some 25 percent of medical and dental students—and many practicing doctors, surgeons and dentists—were born to mothers from countries in Asia and other regions of the world where the virus is endemic, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," The Associated Press reports.

The CDC's guidelines for management of healthcare workers with hepatitis B were updated last year for the first time since 1991.

Chelsea Rice is an associate editor for HealthLeaders Media.
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