HJBR Mar-Apr 2019

52 MAR / APR 2019 I  Healthcare Journal of BATON ROUGE column nursing The Nurse Faculty Shortage in Louisiana: Findings from the 2018 Nurse Faculty Survey To take a serious look at the actual or pending nurse faculty shortage in Louisiana, the Louisiana Center for Nursing (LCN) applied for and received funding in August 2017 from the Louisiana Health Works Commission to survey nurse faculty teaching in Louisiana’s licensed practical nurse (LPN), registered nurse (RN), and graduate nursing programs. The Massachusetts NursingWorkload Faculty Survey (2015) was adapted for the current project to determine: 1) nurse faculty perception of the existence of a nurse faculty shortage in Louisiana; and 2) factors contributing to a potential or existing nurse faculty shortage in Louisiana. A total of 1,025 individual emails (800 RN/Graduate nurse faculty and 225 LPN nurse faculty) describing the purpose of the 2018 Nurse Faculty Survey with a link to the survey was sent out on January 22, 2018. Fifteen bounce backs resulted in a sample size of 1,010 potential respon- dents. Nurse faculty were informed in the email that individual responses to the survey would be kept strictly confidential and that the survey data would be report- ed in aggregate. To maintain anonymity, nurse faculty were not asked to disclose any information about their place of em- ployment. The time needed to complete the survey was approximately 15 minutes. Five hundred and eight (508) surveys were completed and returned, resulting in a 50 percent overall response rate. Early on when reviewing the data from the 2018 LCN Nurse Faculty Survey, it was determined that because of the nuances associated with the three types of nursing programs, which are the foci of this proj- ect, findings would be more informative if faculty teaching in each type of nursing program (LPN, RN, graduate) were ana- lyzed independently and as a single cohort. As a result, unique findings based on the type of program in which faculty taught were revealed. For example, there were many similarities amongst faculty teach- ing in LPN, RN, and graduate nursing pro- grams related to job satisfaction, reasons why nurse faculty are likely to leave their primary academic institution, and nurse faculty making the decision to actually leave their current teaching positions in one, five, or ten years, yet there were also specific issues identified that were unique to faculty teaching in a specific program type which increases the informative pow- er of this study. Much of the report is based on the nurse faculty that held a full-time teaching posi- tion (86 percent [425]) according to pro- gram type; LPN, RN, or graduate. A brief overview of the findings obtained from the responses of part-time faculty can be found in the full report at http://lcn.lsbn . state.la.us/Portals/0/Documents/Nurse- FacultySurvey.pdf. Major Findings from the 2018 LCN Nurse Faculty Survey Of the 508 respondents to the LCN 2018 Nurse Faculty Survey, 21 percent (106) taught primarily in LPN programs, 60 percent (306) taught primarily in pre-RN programs, and 17 percent (85) taught pri- marily in graduate programs. For the pur- poses of this study, “primarily” was used to designate the program in which nurse