By Jim Siegel
Gannett Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - Ohio's nursing schools are full but still not producing enough new nurses to meet demand.

Hundreds of students want to get into nursing programs but cannot, even as hospitals, clinics and home-health organizations are searching for nurses to fill thousands of openings.

Many schools simply can't find enough instructors to teach the clinical courses.

"As much as people hear about the nursing shortage being terrible, I'm telling you, the faculty issue is worse," said Carol Hoffman, director of nursing at Marion Technical College.

Hoffman said she probably could place 500 students in her program, but is limited to about 150 because she found only seven full-time nursing instructors this year.

"We cannot get quality faculty," she said. "I had to cancel a section last quarter because I couldn't find faculty."

Health care officials are hoping for any help they can get.

The 34 hospitals in Greater Cincinnati are short about 1,200 nurses, said Lisa Blank, director of the health care workforce center of the Greater Cincinnati Health Council.

"The specific challenge to our region is a lack of educators," she said of the 18 nursing schools in the region. "We can't bump up enrollment because we don't have enough educators. I get calls from frustrated individuals who can't get into a nursing program."

The American Association of College of Nursing reports the problem is a national one.

An association survey found schools turned away nearly 5,300 qualified applicants in 2002. Almost two-thirds of schools blamed faculty shortages.

"The nursing shortage is a multiple problem, and that is one of them," said John Brion, executive director of the Ohio Board of Nursing.

The problem has developed over the years for a variety of reasons.

Convincing young nurses to take on the additional time and growing expense of obtaining a master's degree is increasingly difficult. As a result, the average age of nursing faculty is 53.5 years, and a wave of retirements is expected within the next decade.

And those who do get their master's degrees are finding more lucrative offers outside the classroom. A 2001 national survey by an industry magazine found a nurse practitioner with a master's degree earned $78,217 in private practice, and less than $61,000 for an average faculty member.

Brion said schools are using more creative ways to get around the faculty shortage, including more night classes and programs for older students to get their degrees more quickly than the normal two years.

The state nursing board is offering a nursing education grant program to help schools entice people to get their master's. But beyond that, Brion doesn't know what to do about the problem.

"I don't know what you do as a school to compete with the industry to get faculty," he said. "Teaching offers benefits that aren't financial. The scheduling is pretty nice, especially for someone who has kids. But money is always a factor."

Hoffman said she has begged the Ohio Board of Nursing to lower requirements for full-time instructors, who must have a master's degree in nursing. But Brion said accrediting organizations require instructors to have a master's.

"If our graduates don't graduate from accredited schools, we really put them at a huge disadvantage, and it may interfere with their ability to move out of Ohio," he said.