NM Rep. Stansbury introduces legislation to address nursing workforce shortage

New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury introduced legislation last week that would authorize $5 billion over 10 years in federal grants for public health nurses in state, local and tribal public health departments.

“All across the United States, we’ve had over 100,000 nurses leave the workforce since 2020, in part because of burnout, because of workplace conditions at hospitals and clinics across the country, because, of course, of the implications and impacts of the pandemic itself. And because our nurses and our health care workers have been trying to fight for better workplace conditions,” Stansbury said.

The Public Health Nursing Act would incentivize better workplace conditions, Stansbury said, and is meant to add a surge in health care funding at the local level. The bill would require grant recipients to allow collective bargaining for their nurses and use the funds to address workplace conditions.

“At the end of the day, part of why so many nurses have left the workforce is that they’re working long hours, they’re being called upon to do things that far exceed their capacity, and they’ve had very little workplace rights within the institutions in which they work,” the Democratic representative said.

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

Much of public health care nurses’ work is disease surveillance, immunizations and managing infectious diseases, said Janice Martin, a registered nurse who works part time at a primary care clinic and is a board member of New Mexico Nurses Association.

The bill is “fantastic,” said Martin, but more funding for public health nurses is only one step she thinks is needed to address New Mexico’s nursing shortage.

“It’s a critical piece, especially after the impacts of COVID,” Martin said. “We had a huge public health nursing shortage in the state prior to the onset of COVID, but since 2020, the additional burdens put on them as well as additional resignations (have) left them really, really understaffed.”

The shortage has intensified with nurses leaving the field from burnout, leaving clinics and hospitals to seek higher wages as travel nurses, and leaving because of concerns over workplace safety, said Martin.

“In rural areas, it’s very hard to recruit staff,” said Judy Flores, a southern New Mexico nurse who has been working in nursing for 23 years and in nursing education since 2007.

Sometimes nurses want to specialize, and the specialty may not be available in a rural community, so they leave. She’s also seen nurses who can find employment, but their spouse is unable to, so the family has to move to an urban area.

“I think the working environment also plays a large role in staff being retained. And money doesn’t always solve the problems or motivate nurses. There may be other issues such as quality of life and opportunities for their families that weigh more importantly,” Flores said.

Along with difficulty in recruitment, there’s a bottleneck in the number of nurses who can be trained because there are not enough nursing instructors.

“If there’s a shortage of nursing instructors, it doesn’t matter how many students apply to the program,” Flores said.

A higher percentage of nurses who are trained in a rural community stay and work in that community than do nurses who move to a metro area for their training, Martin said.

“It’s important not to just look at our metro areas, but also to look at the community colleges across the state,” Martin said.