Mike Hegedus MARK HAINES, co-host: We're off to the hospital, where a nationwide nursing shortage has reached well past 100,000. We're short 100,000 nurses. It's one of the issues facing the healthcare business, and one that industry giant Johnson & Johnson has decided to try and help fix. Mike Hegedus is here, scrubbed up, with a look at what and why. And your heart is over 100-- MIKE HEGEDUS reporting: It's alive! It's alive! No, no. RON INSANA, co-host: What, you got some old jokes you want to do with this thing? HEGEDUS: Yeah. OK, speaking of old jokes. Dr. Mark, nursing has suffered from years of long hours, short pay, scary new diseases and other job opportunities for women. But with the nursing shortage growing yearly, the healthcare industry has decided something needs to be done to turn that around; Johnson & Johnson in particular. And it's put $30 million where its thermometer is. The statistics are enough to send you in search of an aspirin. Your blood pressure up, your appetite down. By the time the front end of the baby boom generation, 76 million, reaches retirement age, the shortage of American-trained nurses will be nearly 2.5 times what it is right now. And if it were any shorter now, it would be a traveling show for midgets. Ms. SHERYL STONIM (CEO, St. Peter's University): The challenge on a daily basis is to staff the unit, particularly for patient-safety issues, and to ensure the public a level of comfort that when they come to a hospital they're being cared for by a nurse. Mr. CURT SELQUIST (Johnson & Johnson Company Group Chairman): Not only do we have a current shortage of over 100,000 nurses, but we were already at that point projecting that there would be a 300,000 or 400,000 shortage by the year 2020. That number has gone up to 800,000. HEGEDUS: It's a number that made its way all the way to the board room at Princeton, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson. The global healthcare giant took one look at it and other projections for nursing shortages worldwide and felt its pulse racing. What was needed here was more than a Band-Aid. Mr. SELQUIST: We take on programs like this when we see that there's a need in the business area that we work in, because we know that if the industry we're in is not healthy, we're not going to be healthy. Ms. STONIM: The message has to be at the grade-school level that this is just not only a career, but a wonderful vocation. (Excerpt from TV commercial) HEGEDUS: And that's where J&J has gone to work – the message--spending $30 million on trying to get it out: 'Nursing is not the career you may think it is--long hours, short pay--it's better.' Ms. LISA DIGIOVANNI (Registered Nurse): As a matter of fact, the pay is not bad. It's not as bad as people say that it is. Mr. JAMES DOHERTY (Student Nurse): You have to go on like 12 different cylinders to do this stuff. You've got to think about medications. You have to think about interactions of medications. You have to think about the impact. And they teach us to look at the person in terms of physical, spiritual and emotional well-being. HEGEDUS: Along with a concentrated television ad campaign, J&J's money has gone to the development of a Web site to attract nursing applicants, fellowships for nursing teachers, and to a series of national galas celebrating nursing. Ms. DIGIOVANNI: It was just a great feeling when you came out of there just being a nurse. HEGEDUS: A feeling J&J is trying to help spread to a lot more people. So with luck, you won't be as lonely in five years? Ms. DIGIOVANNI: Absolutely. Hopefully not. HEGEDUS: Since the program began, enrollment in nursing schools across the nation: up 16 points, 6 percent. Average pay for a nurse outside a major metro area is about $47,000, and it's about 50 percent higher than that in major cities. So it's not as lousy pay as we have been led to believe--or just thought, actually. I tried that, it may actually work. Now, what's a nurse's outfit without-- HAINES: Get away from me with that-- HEGEDUS: What's a nurse's outfit without this? HAINES: Oh, that's adorable. |