The concerned reader, as well as the health care professional, may very well be alarmed by the frequent reports in the press about the state of health care in the United States. Journalists have highlighted the shortcomings of inadequately prepared healthcare professionals and under-staffed medical centers. Articles have decried a perceived failure of Long Island’s higher education institutions to respond to the needs, for example, of the biotechnology industry as well as the shortage of health care workers: “Transparent Need,” Newsday, October 19, 2003, and “Concerns Over LI’s Biotech Future,” Newsday, January 30, 2003.

The School of Health Professions and Nursing actively encourages students, staff, and faculty to respond to these articles, to correct misperceptions and/or lend support for pending legislation. In a letter to the editor (Newsday, February 6, 2003) Dr. Theodora Grauer, Dean of the School of Health Professions and Nursing, focused on the recent establishment of a B.S. in Biomedical Technology within the Biomedical Science Department at C.W. Post “in response to the growing need for qualified professionals.”

Considerable workforce shortages due to escalating job vacancies and declining numbers of graduates speak to future consequences in the health care environment. Angela Meisse, Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program in the School of Health Professions and Nursing, commented in a letter to the editor (Newsday, October 31, 2003) that an emphasis should be placed on the varied roles played by the many people who make up the “diagnostic health-care team.” While patients recognize the roles of physician and nurse readily, laboratory technicians, who provide important clinical data to the physicians, are unseen and unknown by the general public. Meisse notes that the lack of the public’s exposure to a wide variety of careers in the healthcare field inhibits the interest and motivation of students to look beyond the obvious careers.

The importance of advanced education for nurses benefits the public by positioning nurses to “provide the highest quality of care to their patients in today’s highly technical, and increasingly impersonal health-care environment (Grauer, Newsday “Alleviating Lack of Nurses,” May 1, 2001). Additionally, she notes that “the gentle touch of the expert nurse combined with advanced skills will go a long way toward reducing the alienation and dissatisfaction expressed by patients today.”

Paul Dominguez, M.S.
Assistant to the Dean