Monday, Oct. 2, the College of William and Mary’s Schroeder Center for Health Policy hosted a talk titled “Strengthening the Current and Future Nursing Workforce.” Douglas Staiger, the Joan Sloan Dickey Third Century Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, delivered the presentation. Staiger’s talk was the second of the Schroeder Center’s three-part series dedicated to educating the College community about healthcare workforce shortages in the United States.
In addition to teaching, Staiger works as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He co-founded ArborMetrix, a healthcare analytics company that provides performance measurements for surgeons working in hospitals, aimed at maximizing quality of care for patients.
Staiger began with a discussion of the highly gendered nature of nursing in the 20th century, when the workforce was composed almost entirely of women. Staiger mentioned that the first nationwide shortage happened once gender equality grew and more women turned away from nursing toward newfound opportunities.
“Nursing was a woman’s occupation for years, and then women got other opportunities, starting in the seventies, and suddenly nobody was going into nursing,” Staiger said.
“Nursing was a woman’s occupation for years, and then women got other opportunities, starting in the seventies, and suddenly nobody was going into nursing,” Staiger said.
Despite this initial drop, Staiger explained, the nursing profession rebounded surprisingly well in the 2000s, with widespread nursing campaigns, new bachelors programs and financial incentives drawing more talent each year. According to Staiger, higher education for nursing is a significant investment, but one that pays off tremendously.
“They are encouraging four-year bachelor’s nursing degrees, Bachelor of Science for nurses, and that’s a bigger investment,” Staiger said. “But, if people can make that investment, it has an incredible return. You get good pay, a good job and good job security out of it.”
One of the biggest challenges in recent years, Staiger noted, has been the COVID-19 pandemic and the disproportionate strain placed on the nursing workforce as a result. This strain led many nurses to retire due to burnout, causing a significant drop in the number of nurses in 2021.
Furthermore, Staiger detailed that students are less prepared than ever before to enter nursing school, mainly due to the pandemic’s restraints on learning.
“We’re on average quite a bit behind where earlier cohorts had been because of the pandemic and the school closures and all that,” Staiger said. “They’re really not where they should be, and nursing schools are worried they’re not going to be able to pass the licensure test.”
Despite these challenges, Staiger closed his talk on an optimistic note, stating that with more financial incentives from healthcare employers and continued growth in nursing school enrollment, strengthening the nursing workforce is within reach.
“Our forecasts currently, assuming that entry stays a little bit above where it currently is, which we would expect because it’s been growing forever, we’re going to add over a million nurses to the workforce on top of retirements by 2030,” Staiger said.
“Our forecasts currently, assuming that entry stays a little bit above where it currently is, which we would expect because it’s been growing forever, we’re going to add over a million nurses to the workforce on top of retirements by 2030,” Staiger said.
The Schroeder Center, directed by Paul R. Verkuil Professor of Economics Jennifer Mellor, offers different courses each year that fit emerging trends in the healthcare industry. Mellor currently teaches a course focused on healthcare workforce shortages originating from the pandemic. Her students attended the talk, and she felt Staiger’s presentation tied perfectly into their class discussion on non-governmental solutions to healthcare shortages.
“Not all problems need governments to fix them,” Mellor said. “He spoke to that a little bit as well by talking about the things that private employers can do on their own and how governments can simply support their existing actions.
Meghan Salaga ’24, a public policy and economics major, is a member of Mellor’s class. Salaga, originally from a rural area, was particularly intrigued by Staiger’s remarks on the lack of nursing diversity in rural areas, which resonated with her personal experience.
“Even though it doesn’t seem that way, there are more diverse populations, Black, Hispanic, Asian populations in the rural areas that don’t see themselves represented in the healthcare workforce,” Salaga said. “I just think it’s definitely a very pressing issue to bring more diversity to the workforce in general.”
Senior lecturer of kinesiology Ashleigh Everhardt Queen serves as the College’s pre-nursing advisor. Queen emphasized how the College’s liberal arts education thoroughly prepares students for nursing school, providing them with a well-rounded understanding of the healthcare industry.
“I think the liberal arts education also makes our students more aware of things in health care that maybe you might not see if you went two years undergrad and then two years into nursing school at the undergrad level, because you have that awareness of the social issues and the politics around health care, which I think is a huge benefit for the nursing field,” Queen said.
