Abstract
The nursing shortage continues to grow, leaving healthcare systems and patients in a precarious situation. A major reason for the shortage is the lack of nursing faculty to educate future nurses, which has hindered nursing programs nationwide from accepting students interested in a nursing career. This qualitative study explored the existing academic nurse educator shortage and sought solutions that an important stakeholder group, the public and business sector/business owners, might implement to mitigate the dual shortage of professional nurses and academic nurse educators. Using a modified Nominal Group Technique (NGT) design, the research team identified five major stakeholder groups which could benefit from addressing the academic nurse educator shortage. Team subgroups reviewed relevant literature and crafted recommendations to address the academic nurse educator shortage. This article discusses findings from one of these major stakeholders: the public and business/business owner sectors. Forty-five academic nurse educators were recruited from volunteers engaged in a national nursing education online forum and 25 participants completed the study. Five themes emerged: encourage lobbying efforts with legislators; engage the media in exposing the relationship of the academic nurse educator shortage and the nursing shortage; incentivize higher education opportunities for nurses to become academic nurse educators; elevate the life experience of patients; and stakeholder collaboration. A continued partnership between the public/business sectors/business owners and leaders within the profession of nursing must exist to enhance the academic nurse educator role. Only with this partnership can those within the profession of nursing continue to serve the public sustainably for years to come.