This ultimately becomes a patient safety issue. In the absence of their ability to promise attractive compensation, several schools are experimenting with other ways to attract qualified faculty. Others are reducing teaching loads to make an academic career more enticing to research-oriented PhDs and clinicians. Some schools are trying to create better working conditions and opportunities to supplement income. It's not part of their official workload but we are very tolerant of their time away from campus.
Schools also attempt to plug staffing gaps in other ways.
But positioning master's-prepared nurses as faculty raises some quality issues, especially at the graduate level, says Ohio State's Carole Anderson. Quality suggests that you have at least a degree higher than your students. Nursing's legacy is full of quick fixes that have, over the long run, hurt the profession. We need to develop a substantive, coordinated effort to increase the number of doctorally prepared nurses who select an academic career. This message has not been lost on nursing schools, and most are actively engaged in bolstering the academic pipeline.