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Growing up in Lexington, Tenn., there was never any doubt that Verge would follow in the footsteps of her grandmother who, at age 71, still works as a nurse caring for patients.
“I grew up watching her go to work and, of course, she was dressed in her white dress and white stockings and that stiff white cap. I was going to be a nurse just like her.”
Her grandfather’s cancer diagnosis led to her nursing specialty.
“My grandfather raised me, and he died from lung cancer,” Verge explained. “I just knew when I graduated from Methodist School of Nursing in Memphis that oncology was what I wanted to do.”
For 10 years, Verge has specialized in caring for cancer patients – moving from floor nursing to the stem cell transplant clinic. She has first-hand knowledge of what families there are experiencing after her mother developed aplastic anemia and needed a stem cell transplant. Verge was the best match, so the two women traveled to Duke University Medical Center where Lynetha donated her own stem cells to try to save her mother’s life. A month later, her mother developed graft-versus-host disease and died. Despite the outcome, Verge feels blessed to have participated in the medical quest to save her mother, calling it a wonderful experience that has reinforced her special kinship with families in the transplant clinic.
“It’s like a big family because you see the transplant patients daily,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed that part of nursing, knowing that I’m going to see a patient again on a regular basis. We cry together. We share the family births and the weddings and anniversaries. They get to know about my family, and they ask about my children.”
Verge now works in the outpatient clinic, helping lung cancer patients like Betty Eaves, who considers the nurse her partner in the fight against cancer.
“She is my rock,” Eaves explained. “She is the one who lets me know what I need to know. You can ask questions that you normally wouldn’t ask someone you don’t feel close to. I’ve never had that bond before. It feels really good, and it feels safe. It’s very much a part of what makes you feel better and work harder toward your goal of getting well.”
A profession in peril?
The close relationship that develops between cancer patients and their nurses is just one of the reasons so many nurses choose to specialize in oncology. But there is a storm looming on the horizon for oncology patients – a projected shortage of oncology nurses like Verge to care for the coming wave of 80 million baby boomers whose advancing age will put them at increased risk for cancer.
“Our projections show that when we reach 2015, the nursing workforce – which has been growing at a very slow rate – will stop growing just as demand is increasing at a strong clip,” said Peter Buerhaus, Ph.D., R.N., director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies.
In the meantime, the existing nursing workforce will be retiring in large numbers throughout the decade, leading to very large shortages in the latter part of the next decade and reaching a deficit of 285,000 registered nurses by 2020, Buerhaus said.
“That is almost three times larger than any shortage we’ve experienced in the last 50 years. I worry deeply about that because a shortage of this magnitude could mean that the lights will turn off on some nursing units,” Buerhaus predicted. “It will cause hospitals to reduce hours of operation for certain services. Quality of care will be at risk because there will not be enough staff. Safety will be at risk, and it gets worse.”
By the year 2025, Buerhaus predicts the shortage will grow to 500,000 – a shortage so large that it could become a major economic issue for the nation.
“Such a future doesn’t have to evolve,” he said. “There is time to avert such a shortage, but we need to get moving, now!”
Buerhaus says recently published research studies provide convincing evidence that nursing staffing levels have a direct impact on the quality of medical care.
“Taken together the evidence is fairly clear that low staffing is associated with increased risk of urinary tract infections, pressure ulcers, medication mistakes, falls with injuries, GI bleeding, pneumonia, blood stream infections and probably another half-dozen or more negative outcomes,” Buerhaus said.
Physicians specializing in cancer also recognize that having specially trained oncology nurses has a positive impact on patient outcomes.
“From data we collected in 2000, we asked oncologists if they see a difference in the quality of care related to nurses who have a specialty in oncology or are in oncology-specific units,” Buerhaus explained. “They were aware of that difference, and they valued that difference.”
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