Preparing Pennsylvania's Nursing Workforce for an Aging Population
Type: News
Focus Area: Workforce Development
Jacqueline Dunbar-Jacob, PhD, RN, FAAN, listens as Megan Kazakoff, DNP, AGNP-C, RN, CNE, speaks about the Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative.
As Pennsylvanians age, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) is exploring how nursing education, workforce development, and new partnerships can better prepare nurses to care for older adults.
More than 2.6 million Pennsylvanians are age 65 or older — roughly one in five residents of the Commonwealth — and 97% of older Pennsylvanians live outside nursing homes, making age-friendly care essential across healthcare settings and communities.
Yet the nursing workforce is largely unprepared for that reality.
At the August 12 Health Careers Futures (HCF) Board meeting, nursing educators, JHF staff, and HCF Board members explored how Pennsylvania can better equip its nursing workforce to care for a rapidly aging population, and how JHF can build on years of work in nursing education and workforce development to help lead that effort.
Pennsylvania has 95 programs preparing new registered nurses, yet nearly one in five hospital RN positions is vacant, while nationally, nearly four in 10 RNs say they may leave the profession or retire within five years. At the same time, nurses receive limited preparation for an aging population: just 1% of RNs and 15% of nurse practitioners are certified in geriatrics nationally, even as care for older adults increasingly shifts to homes and communities and requires new skills in digital health and team-based care.
JHF Project Manager Maureen Saxon-Gioia, MHA, BSN, RN, highlighted lessons from JHF's Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative, an initiative that brought nursing schools and nursing homes together to strengthen geriatric education and improve care of older adults.
Jacqueline Dunbar-Jacob, PhD, RN, FAAN, Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Service Professor of Nursing at the University of Pittsburgh, and Megan Kazakoff, DNP, AGNP-C, RN, CNE, Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, then discussed what the Collaborative revealed about educating the next generation of nurses.
Among the challenges are ageism, inconsistent geriatric education across nursing programs, and limited geriatric preparation among faculty. Kazakoff noted that students often enter nursing school interested in fields such as pediatrics rather than geriatrics, but meaningful clinical experiences with older adults can challenge their assumptions about aging and expose them to the complexity of the work.
HCF Board members and JHF staff discuss challenges facing Pennsylvania’s aging population.
Dr. Dunbar-Jacob stressed that the goal isn't simply to recruit more nurses to nursing homes. Because nurses care for older adults across the healthcare continuum, geriatric knowledge is relevant regardless of where they practice.
The meeting concluded with a discussion of how HCF and JHF could build on that foundation, including opportunities to strengthen faculty development and nursing education across the state. The challenge is larger than building a pipeline for nurses who specialize in geriatrics: it is preparing every nurse for a Commonwealth in which caring for older adults will increasingly be part of the job.
