Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Grant Ely Three Minute Thesis


Work-readiness before Graduation

The nursing shortage in the United States is a crisis. Every year between 500,000 and 1.2 million patients in the United States cannot get adequate nursing care because there are not enough registered nurses (RNs). RNs are regularly pushed beyond their limits to care for extra patients, which results in safety issues and adverse health outcomes for patients. The nursing shortage also leads to higher nurse burnout and attrition rates, putting more pressure on the RNs that remain behind to manage the additional patients. Compounding this vicious cycle are forecasts of ever-increasing patient numbers with higher healthcare acuity. While there has been considerable attention on the critical situation of current working RNs, an extensive research gap exists in studying how to supply more work-ready nurses. This dissertation’s primary objective is to identify nursing school challenges in preparing more work-ready nurses and describe the steps toward a comprehensive solution. The nation faces an overwhelming healthcare crisis that will only grow in severity if nothing is changed. There is an imminent need for nursing schools to understand how to increase the number of work-ready nurse graduates.

Grant Ely

Grant Ely is a PhD student in the College of Nursing who has two bachelor’s degrees: one in nursing and the other in historical research, and an MBA in Healthcare Management. He has worked in hospital and community settings. Since graduating from WSU in Nursing, Grant has always wanted to return to the College of Nursing and develop a national nursing curriculum to decrease faculty and student stress while ensuring students are work-ready to care for patients by the time they graduate.