"The nursing shortage is truly a public health crisis. If you don't have a sufficient number of nurses to deliver the quality of care the public is demanding, you must respond in one way or another."

Those are the words of nursing workforce expert Julie Sochalski, the featured speaker at the Wayne State University College of Nursing's Partnerships in Nursing summit on April 29.

Sochalski, an associate professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, is a leading researcher on the nursing workforce and the implications a shortage will have on health care.

"This country has weathered a number of nursing shortages," says Sochalski. "Following the last (nursing shortage) in the late 1980s, the workplace responded: wages went up and more nurses came into the workforce. This is a very different shortage. Changes in the workplace have made it much harder for these prior solutions to solve the problem today."

Also of concern is the shrinking pool of young people who will be entering the workforce. "There will be more jobs out there competing for a smaller labor pool," notes Sochalski.

Accommodating those interested in pursuing a nursing career is becoming more difficult for America's nursing schools, which turn away more than 6,000 applicants each year because of capacity constraints, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. "The college students who are turned away from nursing programs are likely lost to nursing forever," says Barbara Redman, dean of the Wayne State University College of Nursing.

It's a dilemma health care cannot afford according to Sochalski: "Nurse staffing is a powerful predictor of mortality rates. In a recently completed study, we found that each time you increase the number of patients a nurse has to care for by one, the patient mortality rate rises by 7-percent. That is fairly substantial."

Reducing the patient mortality rate provides a powerful incentive to increase the capacity of nursing programs. "If we actually have people who are interested and want to (pursue nursing), it would be a travesty to lose them," cautions Sochalski. "We have a group of people who have said they want to contribute to the betterment of health care, that is great, the last thing you want to do is lose that."

The Wayne State University College of Nursing's Partnerships in Nursing will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 29 at the McGregor Memorial Conference Center on the university's Detroit campus. Space is limited, RSVP required. Please call, (313) 577-6967 for information.