A team of nursing experts from North Dakota shared their expertise at the first Nursing Education Capacity Summit in June at Washington, DC. Sponsored by the AARP, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), the Summit was created to identify solutions to the nurse faculty shortage that is forcing nursing schools to turn away thousands of qualified nursing candidates each year. Summit participants developed approaches to improving nursing education capacity, with the ultimate goal of reversing the persistent nursing shortage that could leave the United States without enough nurses. North Dakota’s delegation included Jacqueline Mangnall, PhD, RN, Jamestown (ND) College; Chandice Covington, PhD, and Julie Anderson, PhD, UND College of Nursing, Grand Forks; Evelyn Orth, MSN, MMGT, RN, United Tribes Technical College, Bismarck; Jan Kamphuis, PhD, Medcenter One, Bismarck; Larry Anderson, North Dakota Department of Commerce, Bismarck; Jane Roggensack, MS, RN, MeritCare Health System, Fargo; Patricia Moulton, PhD, UND Center for Rural Health (CRH), Grand Forks; Constance Kalanek, RN, North Dakota Board of Nursing, Bismarck, and Linda Wurtz, AARP, Bismarck.

North Dakota is uniquely positioned to contribute to the summit because of its commitment to team work, demonstrated best practices related to increasing the nursing workforce, and excellent capacity to build even more effective partnerships for solutions in the future, according to Moulton, assistant professor at the CRH. “This team comprises a well-connected, representative body of nurses, workforce development representatives, and consumer advocates who are fully committed to implementing initiatives geared toward assuring that nursing education in North Dakota will be able to meet the growing demand for nurses now and in the future,” said Mangnall, leader of the state’s team.

The Summit comes at a critical time for nursing, she said. Latest surveys project that the United States could fall short by close to half a million registered nurses by 2025 without aggressive action. The supply of new nurses is failing to keep pace with rising patient demand, in part because a significant number of interested and qualified nursing school applicants have been turned away in recent years due to a growing shortage of nursing faculty.