Maryland?s nurses face new obstacles: a shortage of nursing faculty and delivering babies to mothers and fathers who serve overseas.
Concern about these challenges was shared at the Association of Women?s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses convention, the largest ever in its 30-year history, event organizers said.
Close to 3,000 attendees from every state, Canada and as far away as Taiwan attended the event, which started Sunday and ends Wednesday at the Baltimore Convention Center.
Nurses said educators willing to teach future nurses are in demand.
“In 2004, 140,000 qualified nurse applicants were turned away from colleges because of faculty shortages,” association President Joan Edwards told the thousands of nurses, 200 of them from Maryland.
Johns Hopkins School of Nursing accepted the largest class for this fall, with 165 students, assistant professor Betty Johnson said, but the faculty numbers remain steady at 15. In the 2005-06 school year, 150 applicants were accepted, compared to previous enrollments of 110 to 115 nursing students.
“So we try to mentor students and be role models for them, so that they will want to educate,” she said.
Nationwide, the average nursing faculty member?s age is 47, so the problem will only worsen as more retire, said Susan Lowinger, a nurse at Baltimore?s St. Agnes Hospital.
One solution, she suggested, would be to create more scholarships to finance further schooling for nurses.
“I would love to teach, but I don?t have enough money to go back to school,” she said.
Overseas delivery
Theresa Hart, a maternity ward nurse at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, said her hospital uses technology to help military families stay in touch during their children?s deliveries.
“We teleconference to Kuwait and Iraq and make long-distance phone calls so fathers can help say, ?Push!?” Hart said.
She said she sees mothers who give birth and go to war months later, and fathers who serve in the armed forces but long to be stateside when their wives deliver.
“We try to keep the family together, so when that family is separated, we?re your family and the military is your family,” she said.
AWHONN represents 22,00 health care professionals from the United States, Canada and abroad, according to information provided by the organization.
