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Just how undervalued and underfunded is nursing?

Money differences between medicine and nursing

Below are a few dramatic comparisons that illustrate how poorly nursing is valued and funded relative to medicine and other professions.
 

  1. Nursing researchers receive less than 0.5% (half of one percent) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health research budget. (link)
     
     
  2. Nursing residencies receive $1 of U.S. federal funding for every $375 that physician residencies receive. (link)
     
     
  3. Nursing education receives $1 for every $50 that physician education receives.
     
     
  4. Only 2% of hospitals have even a single nurse sitting on their boards of directors--even though hospitals are, by definition, nursing institutions. If patients didn't need nursing care, they wouldn't be in the hospital. (link)
     
     
  5. Nursing educators receive only 76% as much salary as colleagues in comparable fields. (link)
     

Please discuss these issues with your legislators or other decision makers. Urge them to give nursing the funding it needs to grow stronger and provide high quality preventative and clinical care to everyone who needs it.
 

Last updated November 15, 2009

 


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