Cindy Adams has been in the nursing profession for more than 40 years, and throughout her career there has been a steady drumbeat of concern surrounding the impending nursing shortage. The concern has only worsened over the years, and in Indiana there will be an additional 5,000 nursing jobs to fill by 2030, up from the initial estimate of 3,000.

“The pandemic came and went and kind of wreaked havoc on the nursing workforce. Anywhere between 300,000 – 500,000 nurses left the workforce during the pandemic. It was a big hit to the nursing workforce at a time when we were expecting a substantial shortage of about a million nurses nationwide by 2030 anyway,” says Adams, chief nursing officer of Ascension St. Vincent and Indiana Center for Nursing (ICN) board member.

Adams noted that the growing gap between the supply and demand of nurses is due in part to several other factors, including burnout, limited resources and education and training that have not caught up to the complexity and dynamics of the real work environment, causing people to suddenly exit the profession.

To address these issues, ICN hosted a series of roundtable discussions, convened over two days, in early 2023, alongside Ascend Indiana. The roundtable provided a platform for more 125 individuals representing employers, higher education, government, workforce and community partners to identify challenges, collaboratively devise actionable solutions and establish a shared vision for the future of nursing in Indiana.

Three action items emerged from the roundtable events and were organized into the following themes:

• Career Awareness: Improve career awareness through experiential learning for K-12 students and launch a robust career awareness campaign;
• Education and Training: Develop common pathways to nursing for students, non-nursing healthcare professionals and career changers while also creating seamless pathways for high school students to transition into postsecondary education; and
• Practice Readiness: Develop a shared definition of practice-readiness for nurses and design the ideal state nursing degree program experience.

This three-pronged approach, once fully implemented, could have a significant impact on the nursing talent pipeline – by attracting more Hoosiers to the profession and ensuring they are prepared to work once in the healthcare setting.

As a first step, the group identified two areas of focus that could be implemented in an 18-month time span. The ICN Board of Directors approved the formation of two working groups: one dedicated to defining readiness for practice and another developing a pilot academic-practice model.

“We’ve had a committee working on what it means when we say nurses coming out of school are ready for entry-level practice. What does that mean? What does that look like?” Adams says. The goal is to validate the shared definition with an assessment tool so required knowledge, skills and abilities can be mapped to education and training programs.

A second committee is charged with developing a new academic-practice model that Adams calls both transformational and revolutionary. The first pilot will be administered by an academic partner, Indiana University, and a practice partner, Ascension St. Vincent. The pilot will craft and test an academic-to-practice model emphasizing competency and readiness for real-world practice. The pilot is expected to be implemented in late 2024 with subsequent statewide iterations offered in 2025.

Adams, again reflecting on her 41 years in the nursing profession, said the process of bringing together and engaging hundreds of stakeholders was one reason they got to such impactful solutions.

“Once we got all these people in the room, I heard perspectives I had never considered,” she said. “I had some long-held ideas about how to approach talent development and there were many perspectives shared that really made me stop and think. There really was rich dialogue, resulting in something I had never experienced before.”

To read the full “Indiana Center for Nursing Statewide Roundtables: A Year in Review” click here. To learn more about the Indiana Center for Nursing, visit ic4n.org.