The Connecticut Center for Nursing Workforce, Inc. (CCNW), in collaboration with the Connecticut Data Collaborative (CTData), is pleased to present the Nursing Education in Connecticut 2022 Data Story. This comprehensive report provides valuable insights into the students and faculty of Registered Nurse (RN) and Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) pre-licensure education programs in Connecticut from January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022.
 
Key Findings:
 
- Proactive measures are needed to increase student recruitment into baccalaureate degree nursing programs in the state. Recommended strategies include enhanced marketing and outreach efforts, collaboration with high schools and community colleges to provide pathways for students interested in nursing, offering financial incentives, scholarships, grants, or loan forgiveness programs, and providing mentorship and networking opportunities for prospective students.
 
- Our data shows that work needs to be done to increase the recruitment of Black and Hispanic/Latino nursing program faculty to better match the demographics of the student population, particularly in LPN programs. Recommended strategies include implementing targeted outreach and recruitment programs, offering mentorship and support programs, creating a welcoming and inclusive environment within the nursing program, and instituting fair and unbiased hiring practices to support diverse faculty growth.
 
This report serves as a call to action for the nursing community to address these critical issues and work towards a more diverse and inclusive nursing education environment in Connecticut.
 
You can access the full report on the CCNW and CTData websites for more details.
 
https://www.ctcenterfornursingworkforce.com/data-reports.html
https://nursing.ctdata.org/
 
We deeply appreciate your attention and look forward to working together to improve nursing education in Connecticut.
 

The RN and LPN data were extracted from the 2022 Connecticut Nurse Licensure System Dataset collected by the CT Department of Public Health. The data was collected through the online NurSys Annual Licensing Database using the Minimum Data Set for Nursing Supply, created by the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers. CCNW and CTData are excited to highlight findings from this comprehensive dataset, its implications for Connecticut, and key recommendations to ensure that Connecticut establishes a robust and sustainable nursing workforce. This data story focuses on nurses who are licensed in Connecticut and who are actively working in the state.
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Notes about the Minimum Data Set for Nursing Supply data:

• This dataset highlights the workforce demographics of Connecticut’s licensed Registered Nurses (RNs) and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) including:
  • Number of nurses who hold an active license in Connecticut, and of those, how many are actually working
  • Age, ethnicity, and education
  • Work settings of our employed nurses
• Not all data are required to be entered in the survey, so each indicator may have a different response rate
• This is the most recent RN and LPN survey data captured in Connecticut between January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022, compiled in the spring of 2023, and analyzed and published in September 2023. Previous Connecticut RN and LPN nursing supply data can be accessed for years 2017 and 2020.

​Over the past decade, much emphasis has been placed on the importance of academic progression for the nursing workforce.
 
Scholars and health experts agree that higher levels of education increase delivery of quality patient centered care across all health care settings. However, obtaining and analyzing equitable national and state data regarding academic progression trends in nursing is no easy task. Multiple sources and researchers have benchmarked and cross walked key data sources over the years.
NEPIN, the National Education Progression in Nursing collaborative, sought to locate and evaluate a single data source to equitably interpret current trends in academic progression. Created as an expansion of the former Academic Progression in Nursing (APIN) initiative of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, NEPIN is the only national entity solely devoted to ensuring that nurses have access to higher levels of education and achievement. Operating under the fiscal oversight of the OADN Foundation (a federally recognized 501c3 nonprofit organization), NEPIN’s stakeholders understand that successful patient outcomes depend on a well-equipped and sufficiently supported nursing workforce.

This 2021 Report explores the state of Registered Nurse (RN) and Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) pre-licensing nursing education in Connecticut and highlights:
 

• Student & Faculty Demographics at each of the Connecticut RN and LPN Schools & Programs of Nursing,
• Applications rates, educational capacity, and graduation rates, and
• Recommendations to expand the Nursing Education Pipelines in Connecticut

 
The report was created in collaboration with the Connecticut League for Nursing (CLN) and the Connecticut Data Collaborative (CDC). The data used in this Nursing Education Report was created from an annual survey the CLN disseminated to all the nursing schools and programs in Connecticut.

The WHO report cites critical research and references as to why and how Simulation as well as other Virtual learning technologies can transform learning and better prepare our students to meet national competencies and successfully transition to practice thereby limiting the human capital and financial resources that our healthcare settings spend to onboard the new nurse. 
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Access the WHO Report at:  https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/dfigital-education-for-building-health-workforce-capacity-978-92-4-000047-6

This Report was prepared by the National Advisory Council on Nursing Education and Practice.

In their 17th Report to the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the US Congress this past December, is meant to inform the Secretary and Congress on Policy matters arising in the administration of Title VIII Funding pertaining to nursing workforce, nursing education and nursing practice.
Nursing Education is in crisis, and it will take ALL of us to stem the tide and expand our educational pipeline capacity!

​Report can be found at:  https://oadn.org/news/nacnep-report-preparing-nurse-faculty-and-addressing-the-shortage-of-nurse-faculty-and-clinical-preceptors/

In early June of 2021, the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action took a first step towards realizing the vision outlined in the National Academy of Medicine’s (NAM) new report, The Future of Nursing 2020 – 2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity. A virtual Summit with 200 key opinion leaders, experts, and change makers across the fields of health care, nursing, business, academia, and social justice participated in the 2-day hands on event. Twenty-eight (28) teams were created to address each of the report’s 54 sub-recommendations (under its nine major recommendations), answered questions including, What multi-sector partnerships are needed to implement this recommendation? and What milestones or benchmarks will tell us we’ve succeeded?
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The result was 54 Draft Action Plans, each with specific tasks, timelines, and goals, that can guide how nursing will help transform health, health care and health equity for all.  Access the action plans and next steps @ https://campaignforaction.org/resources/future-of-nursing-2030-action-hub/

Resources are available for your organizations to utilize via your State Action Coalitions that undertook many initiatives related to the 2020 Future of Nursing Report published by the National Academy of Medicine. Even if your Action Coalition is not active, the national website for the Campaign still has a treasure trove of materials and toolkits refenced for your use- All free of charge.
In Connecticut, as one of the statewide initiatives via our Coalition, a 4- module online self-paced Population Health Course was created and launched. Although the activities and monies to support the Coalition have waned, The Board of the CT League for Nursing made a commitment to keep the course up and running with a major content revision and update competed in this past July.  This Course can be accessed at: www.CLNOnlineEducation.com
National Campaign resources can be found at:  https://campaignforaction.org/resources/#p=1

In the executive summary of this report, six out of eight priorities for nurse-led transformation directly correlate to the issues that you've identified in your thinktank white paper.  These include:

• Designing new models of care
• Empowering nurses to lead
• Cultivating the pipeline of new nurses
• Prioritizing well-being in mental health
• Enhanced partnerships with academia
• Building a Workforce for tomorrow- Planning at the regional & national levels

Report can be found at: https://nursing.jnj.com/accelerating-nursing-transforming-healthcare

This report provides baseline workforce data and is created in collaboration between the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) and the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers.  The most recent April 2021 Survey Report can be found at WWW.journalofnursingregulation.com
The Report highlights the demographics of RNS an LPNs across the nation. 
As you know, data without context, benchmarking and discussion & debrief with “intimate” stakeholders may not paint an accurate picture.
Although this report is a very robust reflection of employment of nurses across the country, the items included in the minimum data set for supply were created for the purposes of licensing and regulation and not truly designed to capture the nuances of an ever-changing nursing workforce.
Many forecasting models used to project demand and future supply are based on employment patterns in the past.  You know better than I… that this no longer holds true, Nurses do not get hired by one institution right out of school and spend their entire careers with that employer.  They move constantly and cause what is now termed as “The Churn” .  Researchers are still trying to get a hold of this phenomena and incorporate it into new forecasting models to better align our supply projections.