Gail Stuart, dean of the Medical University of South Carolina’s School of Nursing, sees trouble on the health care horizon.

By 2015, South Carolina’s nursing shortage will peak, with many nurses retiring and their positions left unfilled.

Meanwhile, seniors are living longer and will need nurses to help them manage chronic illnesses.

The lack of nurses and the aging population’s growing need for them will converge, forming a perfect storm of a health care crisis, Stuart said.

It is not only the lack of hospital nurses that will fuel the health care services storm. Qualified, professional caregivers who tend to homebound seniors will themselves be retiring, and finding younger caregivers with the same compassion, patience and understanding toward the elderly as older caregivers is already difficult, said Marsha Clayman, marketing director for Care For Life, a West Ashley-based company providing geriatric health care management services.

“Health care workers must have the right attitude,” Clayman explained. “Many in the younger generation lack the life skills to cope with health care needs.”

Not Enough Slots

The number of nurses being educated in South Carolina and other states is not enough to fill the demand, Stuart said.

Last year in the United States, 34,000 qualified nursing applicants were turned away because nursing schools lacked slots for them, she said.

A dearth of space to accommodate would-be nurses is only part of the problem, Stuart said. Another part is that salaries for nursing faculty are too low to attract those who want to teach the profession. Nurses qualified to teach bypass the opportunity because they can earn $15,000 to $20,000 more annually working in a clinical setting.

To combat its nursing shortage, South Carolina must spend more state dollars on nursing education, Stuart said, pointing out that other states have increased such spending to expand enrollment capacity of nursing programs and raise nursing faculty salaries.

“Having enough nurses impacts the economy,” Stuart said. “When businesses want to relocate to an area, they look for good schools and good health care.”

Geriatric Care

Doctors skilled at caring for the elderly will also be in demand, said Dr. William Moran, director of MUSC’s Division of General Internal Medicine/Geriatrics.

By the time today’s first-year medical students finish their training and residencies about seven years from now, South Carolina’s population of seniors 65 and older will have increased from 500,000 to 750,000, Moran noted.

Yet, while the state’s senior population is growing, medical students are shying away from internal medicine, of which geriatrics is a part, because specialty practices offer greater salaries and less student loan debt.

There are about 30 geriatricians in South Carolina, roughly seven in the Lowcountry, Moran said. Although the state realizes more geriatricians will be needed to help care for South Carolina’s growing senior population, just how many more will be needed is difficult to say.

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