North Carolina faces an estimated 12,500 nursing shortage by 2033.
UNC Health RN Braxton Nowell has experienced the pressures of the nursing shortage firsthand.
“One of the great things about medicine is that people are now able to live longer and healthier lives. But we also need nurses to take care of them,” he said.
The North Carolina native began working as a nursing assistant at UNC Health in January 2020.
“My grandmother is the main reason I care for her,” Nowell explained. “I saw her when she was in the hospital, she has been in the hospital many times in her life, and I saw the care she received and how the nurses advocated for her. I knew that was what I wanted to do for people as well.”
He had only been on the job for just three months before the global pandemic caused the health system to experience unprecedented changes in patient care.
“This unit was a COVID-19 unit,” Nowell explained, showing a WRAL news report about Chapel Hill Hospital's advanced care unit.
Nowell continued to train despite widespread burnout in healthcare as coronavirus cases rose. He graduated from UNC in 2022 with a bachelor's degree in nursing.
UNC recently celebrated the graduation of 113 BSN students and an additional 70 graduate students from its Chapel Hill School of Nursing, and hopes more students will follow suit and work in the Tar Heel State. There is.
But a lack of program space is a big problem, he says.
“We don't have enough spots for people who want to be nurses. UNC has 120 spots and I think we get over 200 applications,” Nowell explained. “They don't always have slots for people I know who want to be nurses.”
Kylie Goodman is in the midst of her first year of the Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program through UNC.
“Originally I wanted to be a nutritionist, but as I grew up I always had a real passion for health care,” Goodman said. “I'm very interested in the whole body, and I'm very interested in helping people who are sick in that aspect.”
He and other nursing students are taking medical school classes in Roper Hall while the university's nursing school is being demolished. The new building he plans to open in 2026. Officials say it will help meet his goal of increasing capacity in the university's nursing program by 50%.
Goodman and dozens of other participants in the ABSN program aim to someday fill some of those roles.
“I really enjoy (pediatrics), but I also like adults,” Goodman said. “I think trauma sounds interesting.”
When asked why she wanted to pursue a career in medicine during a global pandemic, Goodman said she just wanted to help people.
“Just being able to come home from work today and say I made a difference in someone's life,” she said. “Patients are in stressful environments and vulnerable. I want to be the person who can help them in those situations.”
She added that being a student during such difficult times has better prepared her to deal with stressful jobs like nursing.
“I think the ability to adapt is really helpful in this career. The ability to accept things as they happen and adapt to them,” Goodman said.
Terry McDonnell, senior vice president and chief nurse at Duke University Health System, said Duke University's current nursing vacancy rate is “less than 1%.” Mr McDonnell said this was due to the “team-based model” used to provide care.
“Nursing care at Duke University benefits from our partnership with the Watts School of Nursing, our close collaboration with the Duke School of Nursing, Durham Institute of Technology, and Wake Institute of Technology, and our efforts to reduce administrative burdens on nurses,” said Professor McDonnell. I am receiving it,” he added.
