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In the 2005-06 academic year, Syracuse University’s School of Nursing came to a complete halt. A little more than a decade later, one of the biggest hospitals in Syracuse, Upstate University Hospital was forced to close 124 hospital beds in response to the shortage in nurses. Is this a consequence the community faces due to shutting down the nursing program at SU?

There were multiple detrimental effects from closing SU’s nursing program. The most evident is the nursing shortage still surrounding the Upstate University Hospital today. Due to the shortage of nurses, patients do not receive the critical attention that they need, leading to errors, higher mortality and morbidity rates.

In addition to the reduction of hospital beds by close to 20%, Upstate University Hospital had to postpone and even halt elective surgeries because there simply are not enough nursing staff to adequately conduct non-life threatening surgeries. It is not clear when these surgeries will resume, syracuse.com reported.

The shortage of nurses has been a world-wide crisis since 2012, and it is predicted to be an ongoing crisis until 2030. Due to the increase in population since the baby-boom generation, the ratio of nurses is low compared to those who are admitted to the hospital and need special care on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, removing hospital beds is a common way of dealing with staff shortages not only at Upstate University Hospital, but at many other hospitals worldwide, resulting in longer wait times to receive a surgery or even a consultation with a doctor.

To mitigate this issue for the present and future of health care, SU should re-establish its nursing program. The School of Nursing at SU has a long history dating back to 1915, when SU’s College of Medicine took control of the nursing school of the Hospital of the Good Shepherd. Once a renowned university for nursing, SU has pioneered and paved the path of early education in nursing. SU’s School of Nursing took part in founding the Minority Nursing Association at SU and was one of the first programs to implement public health nursing as part of the undergraduate curriculum. An alumna, Alice Reynolds, pioneered childbirth classes here at SU.

SU’s nursing program created a foundation for new nursing techniques while bridging the gap between members of marginalized communities in nursing. SU offered scholarships to Japanese American students to attend the university for nursing in the program’s first year in 1943, and an SU alumna, Mary Elizabeth Carnegie, mentored generations of Black nurses.

At the moment, the nursing field is an actively growing field that many students take interest in as their career. A nursing program would be especially relevant for SU, whose campus is surrounded by multiple hospitals. Nursing programs provide resources and training that can accelerate interested students’ chances of becoming a nurse and reduce nurse staffing shortages for hospitals.

Northeastern University in Boston, for example, has an Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) where undergraduate students can receive a degree in nursing within 16 months. Its program equips nursing students with online courses, nursing labs and clinical rotations so that students whose dream career field is nursing are able to work at a hospital in less than two years.

If SU re-implemented a nursing program, it would produce more nurses to work at hospitals in Syracuse, New York state and other hospitals that may be facing the same shortages.

Nurses play a critical role as a part of the healthcare system. They run the data system, care for recovering patients and administer shots for thousands of people. Nursing is a field that should not be taken lightly. Especially in a time of medical uncertainty as COVID-19 continues to evolve, a nursing program at SU is needed for the well-being and health of Syracuse community members, staff and students.

Chaeri Chun is a freshman sociology and neuroscience double major. Her column appears biweekly. She can be reached at cchun02@syr.edu.

Published on November 29, 2021 at 9:36 pm