Sanders Calls for Expanded Access to Medical Education to Address Worker Shortage

The Hill (02/16/23) Choi, Joseph

At a recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recommended expanded access to medical education amid a national healthcare workforce shortage. He partly attributed declining U.S. life expectancy to a lack of access to timely and convenient healthcare, with providers in rural areas especially lacking. "It is a no-brainer to understand that when over 10,000 medical school graduates are unable to fill residency slots every year, we must significantly expand and improve the graduate medical program," Sanders said. He also called for greater student loan forgiveness, noting high medical debts discourage graduates from going to rural regions, where salaries could be lower. Sarah Szanton, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, testified that the average U.S. nurse is 54 years old, while nearly 20% of the nursing workforce is age 65 years and older. "As a country, we need people to become new nurses and we need to retain current nurses," she attested. Szanton added that becoming a nurse requires many resources, including enrolling in school, receiving training and certification and entering careers that foster retention. Tens of thousands of eligible nursing school applicants are rejected, and Szanton primarily blamed "a nurse faculty shortage" to the tune of roughly 2,100 faculty. "We need to increase the number of highly educated nurses who can be faculty and retain them by paying them as much as their clinical counterparts receive," she said.

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