I write in response to the April 13 ADN editorial board piece “Why won’t legislators act on a tool to ease Alaska’s nurse shortage?” In this editorial, the complex issue of the Nurse Licensure Compact was presented in an overly simplified way.
Yes, we are facing a nursing shortage in Alaska and in the rest of the country.
However, the shortage is not born from a lack of RNs but rather, a lack of safe, sustainable nursing jobs. Money-driven hospitals, even the “nonprofit” ones, have saddled nurses with more complex, critically ill patients than one RN can handle while cutting support staff jobs, failing to intervene on patient-on-nurse violence, and enforcing mandatory overtime and denying PTO requests.
Thousands of licensed RNs, including many with whom I graduated at the University of Alaska Anchorage School of Nursing, have left bedside care in favor of case management, esthetics, and biotech — or simply left the profession altogether. Our hospital systems benefit from out-of-state nurses because it disincentivizes the fair treatment of the local workforce.
A conveyor belt of RNs without ties to the community means nurses who do not understand Alaska’s unique health delivery system or advocate for change; a pipeline of new graduate nurses means young, inexperienced staff too green and vulnerable to speak up. UAA can churn out hundreds of new graduates and we can import plane-fulls of Lower 48 RNs — and it will not solve the problem: retaining our highly-skilled, locally-grown nurses.
Joining the Nurse Licensure Compact is smoke and mirrors, disguising dangerous working conditions and calling it a workforce shortage.
— Jamie Douglas, RN
Anchorage
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