“The need for nurses is overwhelming,” declares Dr. Betty Adams, dean of the Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) College of Nursing. “The lack of faculty to train nurses is our biggest problem.” Thousands of qualified nursing school applicants are turned away each year in Texas because there are not enough teachers to train them. The median age in Texas for nursing faculty is 53, and positions often remain vacant for months to years after an instructor retires. Nursing faculty typically make less than the registered nurses they train, so few seek positions at current salaries. Adams predicts an exodus of retiring educators within the next five to 10 years. Today Texas needs 20,000 more nurses than it now has; in 10 years the shortage could exceed 70,000.

In response, PVAMU is establishing a doctoral program in nursing that will enhance faculty training, allow program graduates to obtain better salaries and attract more instructors to the field. “Ensuring an adequate supply of nurses for Houston is directly tied to the number of doctoral students who become faculty and who can teach the latest innovations,” explains Adams. The latest innovations include practicing on automated, simulated human bodies.

“Nursing students no longer practice on each other or on patients,” says Adams. Instead students work on simulators where they are far less inhibited and less likely to alarm patients. The simulators look like people and breathe, blink and respond to medical interventions. Students can draw blood, inject medications and react to any symptom an instructor commands the simulator to replicate. “We can introduce a heart attack while a student is treating the ‘patient’ for diabetes and see how astute the response is in that critical instant,” says Adams. “We were the first nursing program in Texas to use a simulator, and now we have nine. Students practice on simulators before they ever touch a patient, just the way astronauts practice on Earth before they go into space.” She adds, “We’re conducting research to determine if students become as competent when using the simulation technology as when they practice on humans.”

PVAMU’s reputation for innovation and strong performance brings it many invitations to make presentations at national and international conferences. Despite the faculty shortage, the school leads area academic and health science institutions in the enrollment of nursing students, and the number of its students who pass the stringent registered nurse licensing exams far exceeds state and national averages. Yet the shortage of well-trained nurses persists. Adams sums up the solution, “When we have more funding and faculty, we’ll have more nurses.”