A nursing shortage may be helped by having nurses in the community, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Neighborhood Nursing, a community outreach that places both a nurse and a community health worker in communities, meets people where they are and helps overcome their fears and inherent barriers in our current fragmented system. That’s according to Sarah Szanton, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, relating an interaction with a current participant in the program.

Szanton: One of them said I have insurance, I have a doctor. I know I have high blood pressure, I don't go but I come to these nurses. I trust them and they're where I am. We think that that's very powerful and that nurses are the most trusted health profession and we are that most number you know that where there's the most of nurses. Sometimes people say well but there's a nursing shortage so how could you get new nurses out into the community? If you could decrease the demand on the hospitals you wouldn't need as many in the hospital, and there's one nurse for every 81 Americans which really should be enough.            :33

Szanton hopes the initiative will soon be widespread. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.