South Carolina has taken steps to raise its nursing workforce to a higher education level, an important step in ensuring that it is prepared to care for its population, a new analysis shows.
Still, Palmetto’s state needs even more nurses to pursue higher levels of education, according to a report by the SC Office of Healthcare Workforce.
In 2018, just over half of all nurses in the state had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to less than 40% in 2008. This is a significant improvement, but it is still not ideal, according to the analysis.
The Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit organization that provides public health advice, said in 2011 that it wanted to see the proportion of nurses with higher degrees rise to 80 percent this year due to an increasingly complex system and sicker patients, the authors wrote.
Katie Gaul, director of the SC Office of Healthcare Workforce, said she thinks of the need for nurses less as a shortage and more as a challenge to ensure that they receive the proper training and are in the right places.
“We usually have enough,” said Gaul. “They may just not be in the places that need them most.”
The SC Health Workforce Office
Raising educational levels is not only a matter of opening new programs, but also requires that nursing schools have enough teachers, said Gália.
The licensing data used in the analysis was discontinued in mid-2018, so the report does not address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the profession’s workforce in South Carolina.
These effects are difficult to determine, for now. When elective procedures were interrupted during the spring blockade, many health professionals – even nurses – lost their jobs, at least temporarily. But hospitals are now reporting a severe shortage of personnel, as COVID-19 has returned to South Carolina.
About 42,000 registered nurses practiced across the state in 2018, according to the analysis, which studied this group. Of these, 93 percent were women and about half worked in hospitals.
The report also confirmed that black nurses are in short supply in South Carolina. While the black population represents 27% of southern Carolinians, 12% of nurses are black. White nurses, however, are over-represented.
Even so, said Gaul, the profession tends to be more diverse than others, partly because there are several ways to enter the field. Studies have shown that diversity in the health workforce means better care.
“When you understand patients, you provide better care and patients are more satisfied,” said Gaul.
Reach Mary Katherine Wildeman at 843-607-4312. Follow her on Twitter @mkwildeman.