Bay Area Edition | June 2023

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SUPPLY AND DEMAND Turnover and vacancy rates for nurses are growing in the Gulf Coast region, including Harris and Galveston counties. GULF COAST REGION REGISTERED NURSE VACANCY, TURNOVER RATES Registered nurse turnover rate Registered nurse vacancy rate

Jammer said San Jac is seeing a decline in grad- uates to some extent. Limited faculty aects how many students the college’s nursing programs can enroll, she said. Also contributing to the problem is pay disparities, Alexander said. Nurses generally make more money practicing than they do teaching. Additionally, the barriers to become a nursing instructor are high, so few become teachers, Alexander said. Alexander, who has a PhD, said her salary would be twice as high if she worked in a corporate setting. “You really have to do this because you love this,” she said. Jammer said San Jacinto College is aware of the problem and keeps salaries as competitive as pos- sible. But education entities cannot compete neck- and-neck with the health care industry, she said. Lauer said Texas nursing schools are generally increasing the number of nurses they graduate each year. However, more barriers—such as a lack of clin- ical space to train nursing students and recruiting nurse educators—must be addressed to increase the number of graduates even more, she said. “The education pipeline is absolutely critical to meeting demand for nurses, but closing the demand gap will likely require interventions in other areas, too,” she said. Aging workforce, population Another factor pushing the nursing shortage is an aging workforce and population. People live longer than they did decades ago, which means there’s an increased demand for med- ical care, including from nurses. Additionally, many nurses—and nurse educators—are 56 or older and will soon leave the workforce, Alexander said. “We’re gonna see a mass retirement,” she said. In 2000, 13.4% of Harris County nurses and 12.7% of Galveston County nurses were age 56 or older. As of 2019, those percentages had grown to 23.8% and 27.1%, respectively, according to state department data. During the height of COVID-19, Frazee said he met a nurse in her 60s who worked 100 hours in a week, Frazee said. “People were working really long hours,” he said. “It has been very traumatic for nurses.” Lauer said age is a big factor in the problem. “The growing and aging population is a big driver for increased demand for nurses, and that demand is projected to grow at a much higher rate than the supply of nurses,” she said. Jammer also said an aging workforce is a problem. At the height of COVID-19, nurses, some of which were older, worked 12 to 16 hours a day with ill patients. “That just put a bad taste in some of the nurses’

30%

20%

10%

2014

2015 2016 2017

2018

2019 2020 2021 2022

NOTE: DATA IS COLLECTED EVERY TWO YEARS, BUT THE AGENCY ALIGNED THE SURVEY'S TIMING IN 2017 TO MATCH OTHER STATE DATA, AND 2021 EMPLOYER NURSE STAFFING STUDIES WERE POSTPONED UNTIL 2022 DUE TO COVID19.

Less than a decade from now, the Gulf Coast region is projected to have the highest unmet demand for nurses in the state. 1 Panhandle 2 North Texas 3 East Texas REGIONAL UNMET NURSE DEMAND

Local college ocials said the problem is not nec- essarily a lack of students interested in nursing but a shortage of teachers willing and able to educate them. Research shows an average of 10,000 appli- cations to nursing education programs are denied annually due to a lack of space, Frazee said. The number of qualied applicants to nursing education programs in the Gulf Coast region dipped by 3.5% in 2022 for the rst time since 2014, accord- ing to state department data. The number of nursing graduates in the region also dipped 5.7%. Meanwhile, legislators tried to address the prob- lem through bills in the 88th Texas Legislature. Lack of teachers The University of Houston-Clear Lake at Pearland has a program that allows registered nurses to obtain their Bachelor of Science in nursing, opening career advancement opportunities. The program started in 2014, and there’s been a growing interest in it, said Karen Alexander, director of nursing and associate professor at the university. UHCL’s program oers students the ability to attend classes online or in person to cater to their needs. The university is now considering making a graduate program, Alexander said. “The real shortage is the shortage of nurse edu- cators, actually,” she said. “You can’t put nurses out there to work if you don’t have educators to educate them.” San Jacinto Community College in Pasadena also has a nursing programs with several levels of education. The college has a vocational nursing program, which grants certications to students within one year; a program that trains licensed voca- tional nurses to become registered nurses within 1 1/2 years; a two-year program for licensed nursing degrees; and a program that trains registered nurses to get their bachelor’s degree, which was created when the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, said Veronica Jammer, department chair for San Jacinto’s Bachelor of Science in nursing program. “The intent is to meet people wherever they are,” she said of the numerous programs.

7 South Texas 4 West Texas

5 Central Texas

6 Gulf Coast

8 Rio Grande Valley

UNMET DEMAND

>1%

>5% >10%

>15%

>20%

2021

7.9% unmet demand

2032

mouths,” she said. Legislative eorts

Bills were considered in the 88th Texas Legislature, which ended May 29, to address the nursing shortage. Adjusted for ination, the last time legislators considered such a high amount of spending on the nursing shortage problem was 2011. This session

13.6% unmet demand

SOURCE: TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES COMMUNITY IMPACT

COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM