THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015
PAGE 7
KU MED FROM PAGE 1
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
University of Kansas Medical Center said it cannot accept more nursing school applicants even though those in the health care field say there is a shortage of nurses. KU Med attributes the issue to "insufficient funding."
the workforce by 2022. About half of these jobs would contribute to the care of aging baby boomers and help with the increased access to health care that came with the Affordable Care Act. The others would replace nearly 525,000 retiring nurses, according to the ANA.
Those in the health care field say that the shortage of registered nurses (RNs) is a long-standing issue. Andrew Berkin, recruitment manager at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said that the nursing shortage isn't anything new. He said there is a greater demand for RNs who can give acute care.
"The need for nurses is always growing, especially as the living aging population is growing," Berkin said.
The American Association of Colleges of Nurses says "nursing school enrollment is not growing fast enough to meet the projected demand for RN and APRN (Advanced Practice Registered Nurse) services." Universities do not have the increased faculty or facilities to admit more students into their ranks but continue to educate and produce quality nurses who will enter the workforce. According to Barnes, KU Med can admit 104 students each year. She said the school's capacity determines that exact number.
The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) surveyed 12 of the member schools in Kansas. Of those surveyed, "approximately two-thirds report insufficient funding as one of the biggest obstacles to hiring additional faculty." Rep. Barbara Ballard said $9.2 million was taken from the Lawrence campus of the University of Kansas alone, and that KU Med had additional funds cut. Finding funding for the KU Med nursing school
would require more cuts,
Ballard said, some of which
would possibly be jobs.
"You can't cut and then give more money when you cut," Ballard said. "It doesn't work like that."
Ballard said if the state and KU Med can keep the number of nurses being produced flat in the time of a huge financial deficit, then that is a good thing.
"If they have not had to drop down to a hundred or ninety or anything like that, at least they are providing nursing on the same level that they have been for many years," Ballard said.
Unlike the projected shortage of nurses, the University of Kansas is not seeing a shortage of nursing school applicants, according to Erin Holm, a pre-nursing advisor at the University. She said about 250 students applied this past cycle, making an increase in recruitment efforts unnecessary.
"We're still turning quite a few people away because we only take so many each year,"
"Although we want to contribute to the projected shortage, I think that the majority of our contribution is finding the nurses that are going to become the leaders of the future rather than just trying to funnel many more students into nursing," Barnes said.
KU Med recognizes its enrollment limitations. Barnes said the focus is on finding the best students for the 104 spots available.
Holm said.
The University changed its application process for nursing hopefuls this past year, and Holm said she thinks it had an effect on the number of applicants. The school is currently using Nursing Cast, which Holm describes as a common app for nursing students. She said it is more expensive and time-consuming than the previous process, which the school is going back to this October.
"Before we started using Nursing Cast, we had upwards of four or five hundred students apply," Holm said.
cess takes into account GPA and letters of recommendation, as well as volunteer, leadership and health care experience. Holm that the school values hands-on experience so students are sure of their career path when they are admitted.
The school's admission pro-
"Whatever it is, we want you to have that pseudo-patient contact," Holm said.
Berkin echoed the importance of experience outside of the classroom and said hospitals are looking for more bang for their buck when it comes to hiring. He said Lawrence Memorial Hospital is not experiencing a shortage, but he is seeing a shift in applicants.
"Where before we had a line of nurses waiting to apply for open positions with many years of experience, we're now seeing nurses waiting to apply for positions, but typically they're ones right out of school with less than maybe two to three years of experience," Berkin said.
Edited by Callie Byrnes
Seattle CEO cuts pay so all workers earn $70,000
GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
He's already gained new customers, too.
SEATTLE - A Seattle CEO who announced that he's giving himself a drastic pay cut to help cover the cost of big raises for his employees didn't just make those workers happy.
"We've definitely gained a handful of customers in the last day or two," said Stefan Bennett, a customer relations manager at Gravity Payments, a credit card payment processing firm. "We're showing people you can run a good company, and you can pay people fairly, and it can be profitable."
Dan Price, chief executive of the company, stunned his 100-plus workers on Monday when he told them he was cutting his roughly $1 million salary to $70,000 and using company profits to ensure that everyone there would earn at least that much within three years.
For some workers, the increase will more than double their pay. One 21-year-old mother said she'll buy a house.
At a time of increasing anger nationally over the enormous gap between the pay of top executives and their employees, the announcement received immense attention. But corporate governance professor David Larcker of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business said it's unclear if Price's unusual gesture will start a trend.
"It's an alternative way to think about a tough problem, and I give these guys a lot of credit for laying it out there," Larser said. "Whether this would scale to a
bigger organization, it's hard to know. But it's clever, it's interesting and it's fun to think about."
Washington state already has the nation's highest minimum wage at $9.47 an hour, and earlier this month Seattle's minimum wage law went into effect. It will eventually raise base hourly pay to $15.
Labor unions and workers in the Seattle area on Wednesday joined national protests for better pay. Drivers for Uber and Lyft — the app-based car-hailing services — gathered in Seattle, while airport workers rallied at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Gravity's CEO launched the company from his dorm room at Seattle Pacific University when he was just 19. He's long taken a progressive approach that included adopting a policy allowing his workers to take unlimited paid vacation after their first year.
"I think this is just what everyone deserves," Price told workers in a video of Monday's announcement released by the company.
But he also acknowledged it won't be easy: The increased pay will eat into at least half the company's profits, he said, and he has no plans to simply raise rates on clients.
"It's up to us to find a way to make it work," he said.
Bennett, 28, went to college with Price and has worked for Gravity since graduation. He said he was already happy to work for a company that treats its employees and customers well in what he otherwise considers a predatory industry. For him, the raise will amount to about $10,000.