The world needs more nurses. Many people attribute this issue to the pandemic—which accelerated turnover within hospital settings. Or they cite difficult working conditions. This is also true. Being a nurse is hard. Proof? Nearly half of them quit after just five years on the job.
These factors are only exacerbating a problem that has been in development for decades: Many nurses are retiring. Not enough are getting certified and replacing them. How do we encourage people to take up a profession that others are leaving in droves?
One way may be to make the path to getting a nursing degree more accessible. In this article, we take a look at how scholarship opportunities may help encourage more people to become nurses. We will also analyze several other strategies that may be beneficial.
How Scholarship Opportunities Help
The cost of college is quickly reaching a point where many people simply aren’t sure it is worthwhile anymore. Education is an investment. The more money it takes to make that investment, the fewer people will be able to take advantage of it.
Another thing? Good investments feature good returns. Nursing, as a career path, can be lucrative. However, there is a pretty clearly defined income ceiling that hovers around the six-figure.
An aspiring business executive or Wall Street type has every reason to invest in an expensive education. Getting a prestigious degree could provide the leg up they need to get a desirable job or competitive salary.
Nursing is different. No matter how much you spend on your degree, your earning potential will be the same (though it varies depending on where you work).
Students who need to take out a lot of loans may not find a career in nursing to be sensible. Why spend the next fifteen years paying for their degree when they could get trade certified in under a year and start working right away?
Scholarship opportunities help alleviate the financial burden of becoming a nurse. More people will be willing to participate in these programs if they can be sure they won’t come out the other end financially crippled.
Not only do scholarship programs make nursing more enticing, but they also make it more accessible. With them, high school students who come from households that may not have the means to provide significant financial support can still consider becoming nurses.
Below, we will take a look at how scholarship programs can be leveraged most effectively.
Identify High-Need Areas
At this point, the profession itself could be a high-need area. However, when designing scholarship programs, it is good to focus not only on attracting participants but also on filling professional gaps. For example:
- Appeal to minority students: The majority of nurses are white females. While they do good work, they aren’t always able to fully connect with patients who come from backgrounds starkly different than their own. This can lead to miscommunications and poorer patient outcomes for minorities seeking treatment. Diversification in healthcare is an important way to help make sure everyone’s needs are being met.
- Target skill gaps: There are many ways to work as a nurse. Most degree programs provide only the standard certification— which can then be scaffolded into additional credentials through further training or education. However, there are some programs that allow students to pursue graduate coursework simultaneously with their undergraduate studies. These programs are a great way to attract more nurses into high-need areas, like “psychiatric nursing.”
By taking a targeted approach, scholarship programs can improve their effectiveness and more thoroughly address the nursing shortage crisis.
Conditional Financial Support Opportunities
Conditional scholarships require participants to meet a set of expectations following graduation. These expectations could require the person to work for a specific amount of time in their chosen field. They could even be regionally specific.
Typically, if the participant fails to meet the conditions set by the scholarship, the funds will turn into a loan that they must repay.
Some nursing/education/social work-related scholarships already apply these conditions. In the case of nursing, it could be an effective way to:
- Reduce turnover: As mentioned earlier, about half of all new nurses don’t last more than a few years. That’s a significant drop-off. A scholarship that requires nurses to remain in the profession for five years could reduce the turnover issue considerably.
- Boost regional participation: Rural communities are notoriously underserved by their healthcare systems. Most are overly crowded and understaffed. Scholarships that require graduates to spend a pre-specified amount of time working in a rural hospital may help alleviate this problem.
- Encourage upskilling: Scholarships conditional on additional training/upskilling opportunities could encourage nurses to seek extra training after graduation. Not only will this improve their performance, but it also may make them more likely to stay within their profession. Upskilling is strongly correlated with heightened job satisfaction.
The goal of conditional scholarships is not to trap people in careers that don’t make them happy. It is to encourage graduates to make choices that will improve their professional development and meet healthcare needs more directly.
Identifying Nurses Early
One potential way to get people interested in nursing is to plant the seeds early. Nursing college curriculums are highly intensive. It helps to start on them as freshmen to keep up with the program demands and ensure a timely graduation.
While there is no secret formula for getting more freshmen interested in a career in nursing, one strategy may be to encourage interest while students are still in high school.
Guidance counselors can help by mentioning the idea to students who reflect certain nursing characteristics. Academic achievement is a good identifying quality—nursing degrees can be difficult to complete— but there are other important characteristics to look for as well.
People who are nurturing and empathetic may be great future nursing candidates.
Universities can also make a point of plugging their nursing programs more effectively during school visits. Most high schools have days— sometimes several of them throughout the year—in which representatives from different universities set up shop in the gym to plug their programs.
This is a great opportunity to spotlight nursing programs and generate interest.
