One of California’s more significant ongoing problems is its shortage of trained, qualified nurses throughout the state. As California ages and continues to grow in population, many believe the shortage will only become worse. While a recent study indicates that students exist to address our shortage (22,750 qualified applications for just 8,750 first-year slots for the 2004-05 school year), policy makers are working to make the best use of limited resources so that California has the nurses it needs.

The Governor and the legislature have made some proposals on nursing this year that could help address this shortage.

Background
While the CSU takes the lead on the creation of nurses with bachelor’s degrees, it is the California Community College (CCC) system that provides the bulk of California’s nurses.

California has 108 public and private colleges that offer various nursing programs. The CCC’s have 70 programs that offer the Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN), while the CSU campuses offers 15 bachelor’s degree in nursing (BSN) programs and 7 Entry Level Masters’ (ELM) programs, while the UC offers 2 BSN programs and 2 ELM programs. Finally Private colleges offer 7 ADN programs, 12 BSN programs and 5 ELM programs.

Depending on the type of degree and the school you are applying to in California, nursing programs have different approaches on making admission choices. Most BSN and ELM programs require students to take prerequisite courses and a standardized test in order to apply to a program. Applicants are accepted based on these courses and test results.

Students accepted into an ADN program at the CCC do not use such criteria to create its programs. In 1988, the CCC’s had a lawsuit filed against them which contended that their process for the selection of their students did not allow Latino students to participate in their nursing programs at an acceptable rate.

Because of this lawsuit CCC developed a new set of regulations for the application of students into their nursing programs. A common practice of community colleges to choose their students is to use a lottery system, while some admit students on a first-come, first-serve basis. Students are not allowed to be selected by a community college based solely on merit. Because of these selection techniques, the CCC has to deal with a high student attrition rate in its nursing programs as students selected are not always the ones who are most sufficiently prepared to succeed in a nursing program.

California Takes Action
Recognizing the need for more trained nurses, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May Revision of the state budget proposed fully funding a General Fund augmentation of $3.6 million to support approximately 340 additional undergraduate nursing students. The additional funding recognized the higher cost of educating nurses and provided $10,600 per Full-Time-Equivalent nursing student. Both the Senate and the Assembly’s Budget Committee’s approved this funding for the CSU, allowing the CSU to help train more nurses as fast as possible.

In addition to the budget augmentation, newly elected Assembly Member Paul Cook introduced AB 1559 which proposes that a community college district be required to evaluate candidates for admission to registered nursing programs using grade point average, degrees held by applicant, relevant work, proficiency in foreign languages, life experiences, disability, low-income, and their social environment to name only a few of the criteria.

Assembly Member Cook is hoping to draft legislation that makes nursing programs at CCC still inclusive, but with students that are more likely to persist and succeed in their profession.

While the American Nurses Association and the California Nurses Association, along with various hospitals and community colleges support this proposal, the California Federation of Teachers, SEIU and the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California all oppose the measure.

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) wrote a letter opposing AB 1559 unless the author agrees to amend the measure further. They specifically requested that the measure rely less on GPA for the admission of students stating that low-income students would be placed at a disadvantage. They also asked that the measure’s existing sunset provision of eight years be modified to five years, allowing for a more timely review of the legislation’s prognosis. The CSU does not currently have a position on this measure.