Paige Solans will graduate from the College of Maine College of Nursing this spring, however she’s been working part-time in a hospital intensive care unit for the final 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a part of her education, Solans took a course on dealing with affected person demise and dying. Nevertheless it nonetheless was tough to course of the severity of sickness and the quantity of demise she noticed amongst COVID-19 sufferers within the ICU at Japanese Maine Medical Middle in Bangor.
“I don’t suppose something may have ready me for that as a result of I don’t suppose anybody may have predicted how a lot demise we have been going to see,” Solans stated.
Regardless of experiencing the challenges going through healthcare professionals, Solans stated she will’t think about pursuing one other career.
“The kind of resiliency I’ve now as a pupil nurse — quickly to be nurse — I believe that will have taken me years to construct up in any other case,” Solans stated.
At the same time as Maine hospitals fear about pandemic burnout and a nursing scarcity, graduating nursing college students like Solans are desperate to work. So many new nurses have entered the sphere in recent times that a study this year discovered the projected statewide workforce shortfall for 2025 has shrunk in half.
Nationally, enrollment in nursing applications elevated 5.6% in 2020, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
The College of Maine College of Nursing welcomed its largest class of incoming freshmen final fall resulting from an unprecedented variety of certified candidates, stated Kelley Strout, affiliate professor and director of the nursing faculty. In a typical yr, it admits 80 college students. This yr’s complete is 120.
Strout attributed the rise to media consideration on nursing throughout the pandemic and protection calling nurses heroes.
The college additionally noticed a 50% improve in first-generation faculty pupil enrollment, and a 340% improve in Hispanic and Latino college students, Strout stated.
As well as, nursing college students have been concerned in Maine’s COVID-19 pandemic response. They’ve administered greater than 12,000 vaccines at clinics, long-term care amenities, jails, faculties and homeless shelters, Strout stated. College students have responded to outbreaks and staffing shortages at hospitals.
“You title it, they did it,” Strout stated. “Some college students have been fearful at occasions with a pandemic however by no means sufficient to drop out of nursing faculty. Worry is regular however we by no means noticed a mass exodus.”
‘Every part’s COVID’
Whereas there’s extra curiosity, it’s additionally tougher than ever to be a nursing pupil, Strout stated. She has seen unprecedented ranges of stress and anxiousness amongst her college students.
Nursing already was a rigorous subject, however social distancing, gathering restrictions and masks mandates made it tough for college kids to decompress, she stated.
Solans was a sophomore when COVID-19 was detected in Maine. She remembers her lab on the basics of nursing switching from a hands-on class to on-line. As an alternative of studying to place in a catheter on a model, Solans needed to reveal over Zoom with a bathroom paper roll taped to a teddy bear.
“It was simply a kind of moments that all the time caught out to you. I’m like, ‘I’ll keep in mind this without end,’ ” she stated.
The pandemic made her lessons really feel extra actual. On the information, she noticed nurses utilizing isolation precautions she discovered about to stop transmission of infections. And when she heard about N95 masks shortages, Solans was alarmed as a result of she just lately discovered the significance of these masks in dealing with airborne diseases.
“You go to work and all the pieces’s COVID. You come house and all the pieces’s COVID. You go to class and all the pieces’s COVID,” Solans stated. “It was similar to there’s no escape.”
Strout stated she worries in regards to the college students’ psychological well being throughout this demanding time. It’s tempting to make lessons and assignments simpler for college kids, however the faculty wants to supply nurses who can face up to the calls for of the career, “and the calls for have by no means been higher.”
To help nursing college students, the College of Maine is providing summer time programs so college students can lighten their hundreds throughout the yr with out getting off monitor. The faculty additionally acquired a $1.7 million grant to show stress-reduction methods, health applications and vitamin workshops.
“We’re attempting to stability the rigor and calls for of the career, and attempting to help our college students’ emotional well-being so on the finish we’re primarily selling graduating a extra resilient product,” Strout stated.
Workforce shortages
Maine beforehand was on monitor to have a scarcity of greater than 3,000 nurses by 2025. However an updated report commissioned by the Maine’s Nursing Motion Coalition and the Maine Hospital Affiliation discovered that annual will increase in new registered nurses has lowered that projected shortfall to 1,450.
Strout stated Maine’s nursing faculties and healthcare system are working collectively to deal with the workforce disaster and help new college students.
Solans stated the most important problem inflicting burnout she noticed in a hospital was staffing shortages.
“On the finish of the day, you possibly can have as a lot funding, tools, all the pieces, however for those who don’t have the individuals truly there to do the care, nothing goes to get performed,” Solans stated.
Nevertheless, one good thing about workforce shortages is extra alternatives for brand spanking new nurses to work on specialty flooring. Solans thinks she has an opportunity of getting employed to work in an ICU when she graduates, which wouldn’t usually be an choice for a brand new nurse.
Journey nursing
Louis Rosenthall, a freshman on the College of Maine, stated he all the time knew he needed to work within the medical subject. His grandfather is a household practitioner, his grandmother was a faculty nurse and his aunt is a nurse at a Boston hospital.
“Rising up, listening to their tales about how they’ve had a optimistic influence on somebody’s life or going the additional mile to assist somebody any method they’ll impressed me to enter this career,” Rosenthall stated. “Making a optimistic influence on any individual’s life on daily basis simply makes me pleased.”
He was in highschool when COVID-19 began spreading, however that didn’t deter him from making use of to nursing faculty.
Rosenthall stated he’s nonetheless determining which nursing setting he may wish to work in, however he’s all in favour of turning into a journey nurse when he graduates as a option to see totally different locations.
Strout stated she’s heard extra of her college students, like Rosenthall, say they wish to grow to be journey nurses proper out of faculty. These nurses transfer to a brand new neighborhood, sometimes for 13 weeks at a time, and fill in when there are staffing shortages or different short-term challenges.
They’re becoming more of the norm when amenities wrestle to rent full-time nurses resulting from workforce shortages. Journey nurses typically receives a commission a lot larger salaries however are with amenities for shorter intervals, which makes it tough to kind relationships with sufferers.
Whereas some younger nurses are drawn to the adventurous facet, Strout stated that’s not how the journey nurse system is meant. They’re imagined to be skilled nurses who go someplace in a pinch.
“I’m all about nurses making some huge cash and I’m very professional bettering working circumstances for nurses and job satisfaction,” Strout stated. “However I don’t suppose it is a sustainable long-term answer, and I don’t suppose it’s good for affected person care or affected person outcomes.”
Journey nurses don’t assist produce the subsequent technology of nurses as a result of they aren’t with an establishment lengthy sufficient to coach college students.
There already is a scarcity of school and coaching websites, which causes a bottleneck within the capability to coach incoming nurses.
Strout stated her nursing faculty possible received’t admit one other massive class like this yr’s as a result of there aren’t sufficient school. So it’s necessary to extend the state’s provide of certified nurses who can train the subsequent technology.
“It’s a matter of getting our school pool up and actually emphasizing the necessity to get extra nurses educated at a grasp’s diploma or larger,” Strout stated. “That could be a crucial element of this nursing scarcity.”