Let’s face it. Despite the reality that all health care professionals will be working with older adults in some capacity in the near future (there will be 70 million older adults by 2030), aging is a hard sell. While there are an enlightened few, most students in nursing, medicine, and social work are not naturally attracted to geriatrics. Perhaps they are not aware of the demographics. Perhaps they have not been exposed to good role models in the field of aging. Perhaps they do not know of the diverse and rewarding careers that await those interested in aging and health. To make matters worse, even fewer go into the field of academic geriatrics, despite the growing need for gero-expert faculty in the classroom to ensure that all students—regardless of specialization—learn basic competence in caring for our aging society.
To remedy this, Penn State’s Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, together with WPSU Public Broadcasting Production House, created inspiring videos to recruit nurses to an exciting career in academic geriatrics. With funding from Johnson & Johnson, Penn State used the 2008 Institute of Medicine Report: Retooling for an Aging America as a framework for the videos to bring national attention to the critical need for development of a health care workforce prepared to care for older adults.
According to Ann Kolanowski, PhD, RN, Director of Penn State’s Hartford Center, “While all health care workers need the knowledge and skills to deliver basic care to older adults, there is also a huge void in the number of nurses who have expertise in geriatric nursing. These individuals are needed to adequately care for the most complex cases and to train other health care providers. This need for geriatric nursing faculty was the impetus for the development of the recruitment videos.”
The six videos present interviews with leaders in the field of nursing and Program Officers at the Hartford Foundation. They clearly make the case for the demographic mandate. They showcase strong role models in geriatric nursing. And they offer evidence and examples of professional opportunities in academic geriatric nursing. Dr. Kolanowski notes, “We hope schools of nursing will use these recruitment tools to attract the best young minds to careers in geriatric nursing education. I think people will agree that they convey the excitement, rewards, and challenges inherent in academic nursing.”
It is our goal to disseminate these videos as widely as possible; you can find them on Penn State’s Center website, the Hartford Foundation’s brand new YouTube Channel, and soon on POGOe. They are yours to use. Please do. We need to attract more students and faculty now. Older adults depend upon it.