Our country is facing a severe shortage of nurses, with many U.S. hospitals struggling to meet demands for patient care. By next year, we are expected to face a shortage of up to 450,000 nurses. Allied health professionals such as phlebotomists, pharmacy technicians and medical assistants are also in extremely high demand.
Unless new policies are created to help attract and train new talent, we will never have enough healthcare professionals to fill the gaps in the workforce, and patient care will ultimately suffer. I believe it is critical for policymakers to create new pipelines for healthcare jobs — starting in high school.
Many factors contribute to the growing healthcare workforce shortage, from policy and training barriers to high turnover and burnout. One of the most pressing challenges we have today is in building high school students’ awareness of and interest in the healthcare field, specifically in the many available nursing and allied health positions.
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As a nurse educator and the mother of a high schooler, I know many young people who have high aspirations but aren’t familiar with the dozens of different paths to a rewarding career in healthcare.
Surveys show that 58 percent of high school students are interested in jobs that require specific skills, like nursing. But many graduates feel unsure about what to study in college or what career path to pick. And some 30 percent are not following a planned career or educational path at all.
This gap presents an opportunity for us to build students’ knowledge of and awareness about healthcare while they’re still in high school. That could mean sponsoring health education classes or hosting nurses to speak at job fairs.
It could mean encouraging students to participate in educational programs to ensure they are academically prepared for the rigor of nursing school prior to their enrollment, or providing healthcare career-focused field trips so they can get a real sense of the many different roles that nurses play.
Job-shadowing opportunities and simulation labs at local hospitals, healthcare facilities and colleges could also provide students with visual, in-person experiences that expose them to the array of opportunities in the field.
There is often limited understanding of what it means to build a career in nursing or allied health, fields that include a rich tapestry of different roles and healthcare settings. For example, careers in nursing can range from being a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home to a registered nurse in an emergency room to a Ph.D. nursing educator in a classroom.
For allied health, a career could mean being a medical coder in a doctor’s office, an EKG technician in a hospital or performing a variety of other roles.
In short, there are many fulfilling ways to earn a living while bettering our communities — and not all of those paths require going to medical school or completing a four-year program.
Quicker points of entry to the field, such as through training programs and associate degrees, are just as important for students beginning their healthcare professional journeys.
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By partnering with local hospitals, health systems, medical groups and even higher education facilities that offer degrees in healthcare, high school faculty and students can help develop a greater understanding of and interest in nursing as a profession.
In some states, efforts are already underway. Maryland, Missouri and Florida — among other states — have invested in the future of the nursing workforce by providing grants that support nursing programs through recruitment and retention and enhance existing educational programs. In North Carolina, my local school systems have partnered with a grant-funded program to help high schoolers get credentialed and then intern at hospitals in their senior year.
With the right support and investments, policymakers and schools can increase awareness of the critical role nursing plays in delivering quality, patient-focused care to our communities across our country.
By starting early, we can help turn the tide on the nursing and allied health professional shortage and build a robust high school-to-healthcare-worker pipeline to ensure that all patients have access to high-quality care.
Jade Tate, MSN, RN, CNE, is a NCLEX services manager at ATI Nursing Education. She is based in North Carolina.
This story about healthcare career education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.