Throughout the nation, hospitals and other care units are experiencing a nursing shortage and Northern Ohio is not excluded from the problem.

At the root of the dilemma lies the fact that the average age of a working nurse is 47 years old.

“There are simply not enough young nurses to replace the nurses retiring,” said Louise Kimpel, academic adviser in the College of Health and Human Services at the University.

Other reasons for the shortage exist too. Kimpel said that people live longer and therefore are sicker for an extended period of time. In the past, patients would get sick and die, but now because of medical advances people live much longer but may continue to be sick, she said. She added that most shortages are found in critical, intensive or coronary care units.

At BGSU, nursing students attend classes on campus for their first two years, and then if accepted they go on to the Medical College of Ohio to become registered nurses and get their degrees.

MCO consists of students from the university and the University of Toledo.

Students are aware of the shortage of nurses and admit feeling the stress that the shortage is creating. “I worry because the shortage means nurses will have more patients and then we are putting ourselves more at risk of a malpractice issue,” Amanda Geise, a senior at MCO, said.

But the upside of the shortage is the surplus of jobs available to nurses after graduation, Geise said.

“It makes it easier because employers want a new graduate even before he or she has passed the board,” Geise said. “They are willing to train you and even pay for you to take a preparation course.”

Despite the need for nurses, MCO has not started taking more nursing students, but instead has become more selective in their acceptance of students, Kimpel said.

“In the nursing profession we need well qualified students and a lot is expected of them,” Kimpel said.

Class performance standards are higher at MCO as well Geise said.

The grading scale has changed from a ten-point scale to a seven-point scale. This means that the grades are 93 percent for an A, 85 percent for a B and so on. A ten-point scale consists of 90 percent for an A and 80 percent for a B.

The enrollment rate in pre-nursing is growing Kimpel said, but this is another factor that makes acceptance into MCO more difficult.

Jayson Herrera, another student at MCO, said the nursing shortage has given him a greater sense of job security when looking for a job.

“I think my search for a job will be broader, as far as locations are concerned, due to the shortage,” Herrera said.

Although job security may be a positive side to the nursing shortage, Kimpel said nursing jobs will become more stressful because of the number of patients in hospitals.

“Because the baby boomers are rapidly moving toward retirement, nurses are going to be needed more and more,” Kimpel said.

Karen Fisher, a pre-nursing student here, at the University also predicts more stress on the job.

“In general, I think the biggest concern (for nurses) is just having a stressful work environment,” Fisher said. “They will have a lot of added responsibilities if their particular place of employment doesn’t have enough staff on hand.”

Fisher also sees something changing in the future if the vacancies in nursing are not filled. “I could see the role of nurses being changed; if there aren’t enough people to do the work that needs to be done, then that work will need to be done somehow.”