Nurses, We Need You at the Head of the Class

With hospitals across the country clamoring for nurses, one might imagine that nursing schools would be ushering in students by the dozen. But in actuality, hundreds of thousands of applicants are turned away from nursing programs each year, because there aren't enough people to teach them. Through a recent partnership with area colleges and universities, however, Cleveland Clinic has successfully placed more than 50 qualified nurses in adjunct faculty positions throughout Northeast Ohio.

The solution: A matchmaking site

When Cleveland Clinic first reached out in 2005 to Northeastern Ohio colleges and universities to try to combat the nursing faculty shortage, the group committed to several goals - including enhancing the regional supply of nurses.

To do so, they created a Web site that allows participating schools to post open teaching positions and qualified nurses to post their profiles. [To qualify to teach, according to State of Ohio Board of Nursing rules, nurses must have a Bachelor of Science in Nursing or higher to lead clinical groups, and a Master of Science in Nursing or higher to teach in the classroom.] Schools can search for nurses; nurses can search for jobs.

"We are the first to initiate a program like this on such a large scale, and we've opened it up to all eligible nurses and all teaching venues," says Maureen Talty, Programmer Analyst in Nursing Education and Professional Practice Development. As of Sept. 1, more than 150 nurses had entered their profiles, and one-third were subsequently hired as adjunct faculty for the Northeast Ohio Schools of Nursing.

Flexibility, advancement and other rewards

Many Cleveland Clinic nurses who participate in the program say they already had an interest in teaching. But there were challenges they needed to overcome -such as making time to teach, learning to instruct a formal class and teaching a new curriculum - before they could feel comfortable taking on a faculty role. Mary Lillash, RN, says she appreciates the flexibility of the site, explaining that she can list her profile as "inactive" when she is not available to teach.