Nurse shortage looming in Michigan

LANSING, Mich., Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Michigan’s 53 nursing schools reportedly are turning away about half of their applicants due to faculty and money shortages.

The money and staff problems only add to the looming overall nurse shortage experts say is looming within the next few years, The Detroit News reported Monday.

Nursing school applications in Michigan have risen to about 16,000 in the past three years, but there are only enough facilities for roughly half of them. The rest of the applicants are either denied or put on waiting lists for up to two years, while state officials are worried about the shortage of 18,000 nurses predicted by 2015.

"If you're short 18,000, that's an absolute crisis," said Jeanette Klemczak, the state's first chief nurse executive. "If we don't have those nurses, we're going be in a dire situation. We'll find ourselves with closed operating rooms and less hospital beds available to patients. It will slow down the whole delivery of the health care process."