Shawn Mathis: Solving the Global Nursing Shortage
Chris Pepple |
The media headlines continue to tell a similar story across the country: the nations’ shortage of nurses continues to worsen. According to the latest data reported by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the demand for RNs is expected to grow by 2% to 3% each year, but enrollment in schools of nursing is not growing fast enough to meet the projected demand for nurses over the next ten years.
“In a world of over six billion people, we have less than 15 million nurses to address the frontline of healthcare. It is predicted that the nursing shortage will increase dramatically in the next few years as baby boomers begin their ascent into retirement. Shortly, in the United States we will cross the one million nurse shortage mark for the first time in the history of U.S. nursing,” stated Duane Napier, executive director for the West Virginia center for Nursing.
Shawn Mathis (’93) knows the nursing profession is in trouble. In his new book, Solving the Global Nursing Shortage: Social Media and the Cultural Transformation of Nursing, he writes, “The very people who are fundamental to the success of healthcare delivery are either aging out of the healthcare profession or not entering into it. We are hemorrhaging nurses. Complicating the problem, we are not only losing current nurses, but nurse educators are aging out of the field and are not being replaced; without nurse educators, we run the risk of losing RN and baccalaureate programs from college course offerings.”
Mathis, who graduated from Lipscomb University with a Master of Arts degree in religion, first became involved with the nursing industry in 2003 when Vanderbilt University contacted him about a core software system they had developed. This technology had been shown to reduce the nurse turnover rate by several percentage points. Mathis joined with Dr. Jeff McCormack, currently the director of development for Lipscomb’s College of Pharmacy, to license the workforce development software called CareerPACE (Performance-based Advancement Competency Evaluation) through their Nashville-based company, UBI Healthcare Solutions. In 2006, AssistMed announced the acquisition of UBI Healthcare, desiring to expand their company’s focus to include management solutions for the nursing industry.
In 2007, Mathis moved into a new arena in the nursing industry when he created The Nurse Company, the world’s leading nurse shortage management, market research and advisory company with strategic relationships in 14 countries and territories. The Nurse Company provides services such as a social network platform, a job board, technology consulting and software design. The Nurse Company facilitates the use of academic research paired together with pragmatic applications currently employed by leading practitioners to connect nurses worldwide with major developments as they happen.
“Our business is to seek out and develop innovative solutions to the global nurse shortage and to package these solutions for use by healthcare provider organizations, educational institutions and individual nurses. Few professionals have a greater impact on our lives than nurses. I believe that a paradigm shift must occur in how nurses and nursing are viewed if we are to stave off a deepening healthcare crisis. The mission of The Nurse Company is to solve the global nurse shortage one nurse at a time,” said Mathis, chairman and CEO of the company.
Mathis wrote Solving the Global Nursing Shortage to further address key issues in the nursing industry. The book describes how social media technology can enable a cultural transformation within the nursing profession. “I believe that we can use technology to make nursing more human—from a patient care point of view as well as a professional point of view. Through the judicious use of fast-emerging social media tools, nurses can make a quantum leap forward in their ability to connect with each other, collaborate on personal and career issues, and to provide better patient care than ever before,” said Mathis.
Mathis has helped build the social network for nurse professionals and has laid the foundation of networking and collaboration for the nursing profession to undergo the cultural transformation Mathis sees as necessary to heal the nursing profession. He works to affect policy changes that affect the nursing industry and embrace a global perspective of the problems existing in the field. “This is my ministry now,” said Mathis.