PORTLAND, Ore. — A leadership void is putting a nursing program in Portland, Oregon, at risk of closure, causing concern for students and faculty as the state grapples with a nursing shortage.
The director of Portland Community College's nursing program hasn't been replaced since resigning last month, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. The school has until May 4 to fill the position under state nursing regulations.
Students and faculty members say they're worried.
“We have students that are about to graduate,” said Anne Mortensen, a nursing faculty member at PCC. “They will not be able to graduate if we do not have a director."
Dozens of people attended the college's board meeting last week to testify and call for the nursing program director to be replaced.
Nursing faculty at PCC say part of the challenge of filling the leadership position has been financial. Two faculty members who offered to fill the role temporarily requested higher pay. PCC declined the offer, OPB reported.
The college is “working on finding a replacement swiftly,” PCC's interim senior director of marketing and communications James Hill said in a statement to OPB.
A potential closure would likely exacerbate Oregon’s shortage of nurses and nursing faculty.
Nursing programs in Oregon have struggled to recruit teachers because of low pay. Nurse practitioners earn more working in health care than in education. Oregon has the 12th largest pay gap in the country between nursing faculty and nurse practitioners, according to a recent state agency report.
At the same time, hospitals are dealing with an unprecedented combination of staffing shortages, a shortage of available hospital beds and a severe financial crisis.
The pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in the health care system and exacerbated existing problems. Union representatives say that health care workers are not only exhausted but distressed and feeling "moral injury" about the state of their workplaces — about not being able to provide the care that patients need because of low staffing.
