RALEIGH (November 14, 2024) – It’s taken four years since it was in the jowls of a pandemic, but North Carolina is finally taking significant steps to increase its supply of nurses.
“Right now, North Carolina has an urgent need for nurses. Our population is both growing and growing older, and the demands on the nursing profession are intense,” UNC System President told the UNC Board of Governors today.
Hans added that the state faces a shortage of more than 12,000 nurses over the next decade, with acute needs in rural areas.
“This is precisely the kind of fundamental need our public universities are here to address,” he said.
Public Ed Works highlighted the state’s nursing shortage in a series of stories in 2021 on nursing education, accentuating how the state faces a shortage of nursing instructors because it doesn’t pay them enough: A nurse can make more being a nurse than they can teaching people how to nurse.
The General Assembly approved $40 million last year to expand the state’s supply of nurses.
At the UNC System’s 12 schools of nursing, Hans said, “Some of them are expanding mentoring and tutoring for pre-nursing students; some of them are expanding lab space or clinical placements; most of them are hiring more faculty to teach.
“And all of them are experimenting with the goal of how to expand quality education to more students, so that we can get more talented nurses into the field.”1
HANS SAID he spent time last month with philanthropist Bill Conway, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, who has donated $5 million to UNC-Chapel Hill’s nursing program and $2 million to Western Carolina University’s nursing program.
“He believes nursing is God’s work, and he’s right about that. He has also seen the way that high-quality health care careers are a path to upward mobility for families in every part of the country,” Hans said.
“Nursing is a solid, meaningful job that isn’t going to get automated away or moved overseas. We need great nurses in big cities, suburbs, small towns, you name it – there’s an opportunity to serve and earn a family-sustaining wage everywhere.”2
1 https://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/doc.php?id=68259&code=bog, pp. 98-131.
2 https://www.northcarolina.edu/wp-content/uploads/reports-and-documents/president-docs/president-report-to-the-board_november-14-2024.pdf.
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