February 17, 2025

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Healthcare facilities to see worsened nursing shortage by 2027

Healthcare facilities to see worsened nursing shortage by 2027

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) – Nurses are continuing to leave the workforce, and there aren’t enough graduates entering the nursing field to fill the gaps – this information was recently announced by the Maine Nursing Action Coalition.

Aroostook County is currently seeing a nursing shortage similar to the one it faced three years ago, however this shortage is expected to intensify by 2030, according to a report from the Cypress Research Group.

“You have all of this older population that needs care, and elderly people usually require much more healthcare than a younger population does, so now you don’t have the workforce you need coming in because they just aren’t here,” says Tammy Beaulier-Fuller, the Vice President of Nursing and Patient Care Services at AR Gould Hospital in Presque Isle.

Part of the challenge is that a large portion of people in the nursing workforce are approaching retirement age and are expected to leave the profession within the next five years. On top of that, the younger population in Aroostook County is decreasing.

Northern Maine Community College says they’ve been preparing for this upcoming shortage, and have been working to address the growing need.

“We’ve expected and projected this shortage for quite a while and have tried to stem that shortage by increasing the amount of nurses that we’re able to put out of our educational programs,” says Andrew Gagnon, the Department Chair for Nursing, EMS and Allied Health Program at NMCC. “The biggest contributing factor to that, and that we’re seeing in Aroostook County, is there’s such a big part of the nursing workforce that are baby boomers that are now kind of retiring all at the same time.”

AR Gould says they offer multiple initiatives to cover the cost of education and training to incentivize people to enter the nursing field.

“We continue to take in new grads so we get them up and running because we know if we don’t get ahead of this, and get those new grads in now, that when we do hit that cliff in a few years,” says Beaulier-Fuller. “2027 isn’t that far away – we will already have people in the pipeline to fill all of those positions that are going to be exited as these people retire out.”

Both NMCC and AR Gould say a big draw to the profession is that recent graduates can jump right into their preferred specialty, compared to past years where they would have to work in a more general field first.

“I think something that’s really advantageous for our students is that they really gravitate towards nursing is there’s so many different avenues in nursing,” says Gagnon.

“They can go to anything from an office nurse to a med-surge nurse to an OR nurse to whatever they would like, because nowadays those walls are gone,” adds Beaulier-Fuller.

Gagnon adds that one other draw for nursing students is getting to live and work in Aroostook County throughout their education.

“I think once they start to do clinicals and they start to get exposed to life in the county and what working as a nurse in Aroostook County is like, I think that’s one of the most effective ways we’ve kept nurses here,” says Gagnon.

NMCC says that in recent years they have been able to increase their class sizes. They say some of the biggest challenges they see are retention within the workforce, and retention within Aroostook County.

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