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Editor, News-Register:
Most healthcare affordability debates are focused on patients' costs for care. But far less attention is paid to an urgent affordability crisis: the costs to become the nurses our healthcare system desperately needs. When practicing and aspiring nurses cannot afford the very education needed to provide high-quality patient care, step into advanced practice roles, or train the next generation of nursing students, those financial barriers are not just workforce policy - this becomes workforce deterrence.
Recent policy from the Department of Education to cap federal graduate student loans and not designate nursing degrees as 'professional' places significant financial pressures on nurses pursuing higher education degrees - forcing many to delay, downsize, or abandon their educational goals altogether. I know firsthand that West Virginia cannot solve its workforce shortage by pricing future nurses out of the profession. Instead, policymakers must prioritize the educational pathways that make growing the pipeline possible.
Fortunately, Congress has an opportunity to correct course by advancing legislation that would recognize post-baccalaureate nursing education as a professional degree pathway and, therefore, ensure nurses have crucial access to federal financial aid. Several policy proposals like the Nursing is a Professional Degree Act, the Professional Student Degree Act, and the Clarity in Professional Degree Act would be a meaningful step for strengthening the nursing workforce: opening doors to well-paying, fulfilling careers to help close gaps in patient care.
Wheeling