Many areas in Oklahoma are combating a nursing and physician shortage, according to News OK.
Here are five notes:
1. In Oklahoma, 4.9 percent of nurses are over the age of 65 and 23 percent are over the age of 55. In the near future, one out of four Oklahoma nurses will be retired.
2. Small rural hospitals compete with urban hospitals for healthcare workers, especially specialists. Rural hospitals that have nurse-training programs are more successful in filling nursing positions.
3. There is a shortage of nursing faculty, making it difficult to train Oklahoma nurses. An American Association of Colleges of Nurses report found more than 1,000 qualified nursing applicants were not admitted to doctoral programs due to a faculty shortage in addition to financial constraints.
4. Oklahoma ranks 45th in the United States for total active physicians per capita. The majority of physicians in the state practice in the five most populous counties.
5. In an effort to fight the rural physician shortage, health officials from the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust provided a six-year, $3.8 million grant to fund up to 118 osteopathic physician residents in six hospitals across the state through Oklahoma State University's rural medical track program.
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