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The South Florida Commission on the Nursing Shortage, which is comprised of 16 executives in the healthcare and non-healthcare sectors, heads of academic institutions, and public sector organizations met at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale to consider strategies to bolster the region’s third largest generator of jobs.

Topping the list of what the community can do to support the healthcare sector is helping to addressing key labor shortages, especially a shortage of nurses at all levels that is projected to grow. “The work of the consortium and others, and the current economic slowdown has lowered nurse vacancy rates in area hospitals,” Silvia Stradi, RN, chief nursing officer at Palms West Hospital, Loxahatchee, Fla., and president of the Nursing Consortium of South Florida, said in a news release. “However, the demographic trends of a growing and aging population and an aging nursing workforce presents us with a huge challenge that requires us to remain focused on increasing the production of new nurses and retaining and developing the nurses that we have.”

Members of the South Florida Commission on the Nursing Shortage, agreed to support a series of initiatives designed to address critical nurse workforce needs. Included are programs that inform youth of nursing career opportunities, better transition of newly graduated nurses to hospital work environments, support nurses who wish to teach, develop nurse leaders, and retaining nurses.

Florida hospitals provide high skill, high wage jobs, with annual earnings averaging $52,661 in 2006, according to the news release. In 2007, South Florida’s 75 hospitals were responsible for creating 210,204 jobs and bringing $8.9 billion to the local economy according to a new report by the Florida Hospital Association.