Nevada Colleges Ramp Up to Take on Nursing Shortage

Currently ranked 49th in the country, Nevada's hospital staffing situation is getting worse, not better, much as it is nationwide, where a shortage of 750,000 nurses is expected by 2010. The leading cause for the shortage of qualified nurses is explosive population growth and the fact that not enough nurse educators are available locally to meet the increasing demand.

The demand for nurses is almost as high as the demand from students wishing to become nurses. At the Community College of Southern Nevada alone, approximately 450 students apply for 152 spots in the registered-nursing program each semester. The number of spots available is growing each semester. In a recent article in Business Press, Carol Murray who works as an assistant to CCSN's nursing program director was quoted as saying "Our biggest problem is finding nurse educators to teach these students."

UNLV has a two-year-old masters nursing program to train potential instructors. One drawback, however, is a lack of scholarships for graduate students, who often spend years going to school part-time while they work, even though their skills are needed much sooner. Besides the public colleges, CCSN and UNLV, other independent nursing programs have come to Southern Nevada, and more are on the way. New provisional programs exist at Apollo College, in Las Vegas, as well as the University of Southern Nevada, Nevada State College and Touro University, all in Henderson.

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