There’s agreement that there’s a nurse shortage in Alaska, but no consensus on what to do about it. (via AlaskaBeacon)
Alaska’s nurse shortage is widely acknowledged, but there’s less consensus on how to manage solutions. A bill that aims to get nurses licensed and working faster by joining Alaska in a 40-state nurse licensure coalition is mired in pushback. Hospitals and the state’s nursing board support the legislation, but nursing labor unions oppose it.
It takes three to four months to get a nurse’s license in Alaska, even if the applicant already has one in another state, according to the state’s licensing arm, the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. Prax said that’s enough time to find another job. The issue first crossed his desk because military spouses found it too difficult to get nursing jobs in Alaska, he said. lets nurses have a license in their home state and practice in any other compact state.
“We can’t just trade nurses across state lines and solve the problem. This is a problem of supply. And supply is constrained by universities in our state,” she said. “So when we as a state disinvest with the university, we are not meeting the critical need for our workforce.” He said the state has acknowledged it is short-staffed and cannot process nurse license paperwork quickly because of a backlog, so joining a compact is something the state can do now to streamline that work.
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