CAPE NOT EXPERIENCING NURSING SHORTAGE, BUT IT COULD, DIRECTOR SAYS

Southeast Missouri Hospital is not facing hardships with staffing nurses as others have, but it could, the hospital's director of nursing said at a luncheon Wednesday.

"There's a shortage in general in the field of health care professionals," said Karen Hendrickson, assistant administrator and chief nursing executive at the hospital. "Right now we have five full-time nursing positions open and five part-time positions, but this could change overnight."

Hendrickson, who was accompanied by hospital administrator Jim Wente, spoke to the Cape Girardeau Lion's Club.

Presently, Southeast has 475 registered nurses on staff out of 1,550 employees. Although a significant nursing shortage does not exist locally, vacancies statewide are approximately 3,000, Hendrickson said.

Of the hardest hit regions, Southwest Missouri and St. Louis, the latter is close enough to Cape Girardeau to draw away local nurses.

"I wish we were about 30 minutes farther away," she said. "But we are close enough with the interstate for registered nurses to go to St. Louis and make big money."

An aging work force and steady declines in nursing school enrollments are signs that shortages will tend to increase, she said. Nationally, a nurse's average age is 45. At Southeast, the average nurse's age is 39.

90 percent employment

Seeking out former nurses to come back to work is not the answer. In Missouri, about 90 percent of registered nurses are already employed, Hendrickson said.

Many of these have left hospitals to work at surgical centers, where weekends and overnight shifts don't exist. Cape Girardeau has five surgical centers, she said.

Southeast's salary for nurses, at $36,000 for a 40-hour week, is below the national average. But raising a salary that is already competitive by regional pay standards is probably not an answer, Hendrickson said.

One option is to draw more men into the profession, since women make up 93 percent of Missouri's nurses, she said.