by Cindy Price

Faced with fewer RNs per capita than the national average and a higher-than-average nurse turnover rate, Arizona is in dire need of more nurses. So Arizona Gov. Jane Dee Hull, in late April, appointed a Nursing Shortage Task Force to tackle the matter, according to AHA News Now, an American Hospital Association newsletter. "I am charging the task force to focus on solutions, not on restating the problem," Hull said. The group, which comprises representatives from the Arizona State Nurses Association as well as hospitals, long-term care, education and public health, will submit an interim report to the governor by Dec. 15, 2002, and a final proposal by Dec. 21, 2003. Part of the problem has been a population explosion; while the state today has 30 percent more residents than it did 10 years ago (and many of them retirees), the number of nursing school graduates has remained stagnant. For details on the announcement, see www.governor.state.az.us/news/news.cfm.

When California's governor, Gray Davis, announced his plan to implement mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios, his proposal may have had an unintended consequence: pitting health care services in the private sector against their state government counterparts.

According to the Sacramento Bee ("State Nurses Fear Shortage Will Grow," March 17, 2002), nurses who work for the state government are already plagued by greater staffing shortages and lower pay than nurses in the private sector, and this problem will only get worse when hospitals start to comply with the state-imposed nurse-to-patient ratios, which are set to take effect in mid-2003.

The solution, say state nurse labor leaders, is that state government nurses need to be paid more Ñ at least $500 more per month, in order to remain competitive with private-sector nursing salaries. Otherwise, the parties that depend on state nursing services the most Ñ including veterans, state prisoners, youth offenders and the mentally ill Ñ will not receive adequate care.

According to Joanne Spetz, associate director of the center for Californian Health Workforce Studies at the University of California, San Francisco, 21 percent of state government nursing positions remained unfilled, while most private hospitals in California have a nurse vacancy rate of about 10 to 15 percent.

But the state argues that it has a budget crisis, with a nearly $15 billion deficit forecast, and that it can afford to increase salaries by only 5 percent over two years. In addition, the state says its overall benefits package is what gives state service its appeal.

Both the public and private sectors have launched aggressive programs designed to attract more nurses into the profession. For example, Davis announced a three-year, $60 million nurse retraining program, and Kaiser Permanente last summer gave its area nurses an 11 percent increase on top of the 3 percent raise negotiated by the nurses union.

Cindy Price is a senior public relations specialist at the ANA.