Posted on: Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 03:00 CDT
By Fitzpatrick, Joyce J
WE ARE ALL AWARE OF THE NURSE FACULTY SHORTAGE, evidenced by the long waiting lists of qualified students for our programs and the fatigue we feel at the end of a long day of teaching. Although it may not be polite or politically correct to talk about money, we must break this unwritten rule. We must do something about the root cause of the nurse faculty shortage. Of course, there are perks to the academic role, but the discrepancies in pay compared to nurses in other positions will continue to be a deterrent to both recruitment and retention of nurse faculty. The data indicate that staff nurse salaries are higher than those of assistant professors, and that the salary for an independently employed nurse practitioner is 150 percent greater than that of a full professor in nursing (1). The NLN/Carnegie National Survey indicated that nurse practitioners with master’s preparation earned approximately 12 percent more than master’s-prepared faculty members in nursing (2).
There is too much wrong with this financial picture. We live in a knowledge-based economy. Thus, it should follow that those persons responsible for imparting knowledge – faculty should be paid the highest salaries. This is definitely not the case in nursing.
