At 15 years old, Catherine Costner watched her family spend months searching for hospice care for her grandfather. When they finally found a nurse to take the position, the experience left a lasting impression, inspiring Costner to pursue a career in nursing herself.
“I loved her. She was so especially nice to our family in his final moments and that kind of stuck with me and that’s where I started going down the pre-nursing track because I was like, I want to be her. I want to help people in some of their worst times,” she said.
It was never a question where Costner would attend college. Several members of her family, including her brother, now a medical student, attended Mercer University in Macon. But she initially worried that pursing nursing would require her to transfer to Mercer’s nursing school in Atlanta.
The timing worked in her favor. Mercer opened a nursing school in Macon just in time for Costner’s formal clinical training to begin. She became part of the program’s first class and will be in its first graduating class this year.
Credit: Leah Yetter
Credit: Leah Yetter
“Many of the schools [in Georgia] are doing our best to increase enrollment, and providing this program in Macon is one additional way to meet those workforce needs,” said Tammy Barbé, dean of Mercer’s College of Nursing.
Mercer opened the new nursing campus in response to Georgia’s nursing shortage, one of the worst in the country. This expansion gives students the option to study in either Macon or Atlanta.
Similarly, the University of Georgia announced last year it would be opening its first nursing school and plans to welcome its first class next year. Deans of both institutions say their mission is to train more nurses to offset the state’s projected nursing shortage.
By 2038, Georgia is expected to have one of the largest projected nursing shortages in the country, according to the Bureau of Health Workforce’s latest workforce projections. The state is tied with North Carolina for the second-highest projected nursing shortage (20%) following California’s projected shortage (22%), the bureau recently reported.
Georgia has 8.47 registered nurses per 1,000 residents, well below the national average of 9.43, according to the new UGA Victoria Kay Ivester School of Nursing’s website. The school also reports that Georgia faces a 10% shortage of nursing faculty, which limits the state’s ability to train more nurses.
Credit: Marin Guta
Credit: Marin Guta
Driving the shortage
Many nurses left the profession during the COVID-19 pandemic because of increased workload and burnout, choosing to retire early or seek other careers, according to a 2024 report from the Georgia Workforce Center. In Georgia, 13% of nurses left or retired because of the pandemic, compared with the national average of 10%, the center reported.
Since then, technical colleges and universities have struggled to graduate enough nursing school students to offset the shortage. But interest in nursing remains strong.
Enrollment in U.S. nursing programs is rising, but nearly 93,000 qualified applications were turned away nationwide last year, according to the American Association of College of Nursing’s recent annual report. About 18% of the applications were for graduate programs, which limits the pool of future nurse educators. Insufficient faculty, preceptors, classroom space, clinical placement, and budget cuts limit how many students can be accepted, AACN explained in its recent enrollment report.
“We know we have a problem here. We’re working to shift it,” said Carolyn Clevenger, founding dean of the new UGA nursing school. “But the other thing about Georgia specifically is that it’s a very fast-growing state and so whatever shortage we have today we only expect to worsen because of the population growth and because of the aging of the population.”
Credit: Andrew Davis Tucker
Credit: Andrew Davis Tucker
Last year, the University System of Georgia Board of Regents approved UGA’s nursing school after greenlighting an independent UGA medical school. Both schools have been operating through a partnership with Augusta University in Athens.
The UGA medical school welcomes its first class in August with a new building expected to be completed in December. The nursing school begins enrollment in January with plans underway for a new building next to the medical school. The new nursing school building is expected to open in the fall of 2029 for up to 500 students, Clevenger said.
“The overall goal is to increase the number of new graduates into the nursing pipeline each year,” she said. “The other goal for the UGA program is that within five years we’ll begin our programs at the doctoral level to prepare nurse faculty.”
Combating the issue
Last year, the Georgia General Assembly approved the Top State for Talent Act that allowed nursing students graduating with an associate degree from Georgia technical colleges to transfer directly into participating four-year public colleges and universities to pursue a bachelor’s of nursing degree without interruption or loss of credit.
The legislation requires the Georgia Department of Education to align its curriculum with the state’s high-demand career list, which includes nurses and doctors.
To boost enrollment, the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce is offering grants for nursing schools and loan repayment to faculty. Nursing schools that have the capacity to grow with a wait list can apply for up to $500,000, according to Clevenger, who administers the grants as a board member. The schools can decide how to use the funds, she said.
“They know best what their limitations are: Is it about getting more applicants to be attracted to the field? Is it about student support while they’re there? Is it because they need equipment and training skills, training space?”
Mercer used the $500,000 grant it received last year to buy educational equipment and supplies for its nursing skills and simulation labs.
The health care workforce board also offers a program to help nurse faculty repay their student loans. Started in fiscal year 2024, the program pays up to $25,000 for two years, Clevenger said.
“We know that faculty salaries are lower than what a nurse can make in practice, so we’ve given over 30 of those out over the last 2 years,” she said.
The Georgia Rural Health Transformation program, supported by Congress, granted the state about $219 million this year to foster interest in nursing, including summer camps to expose high school students to nursing and training for clinical faculty, Clevenger explained.
Rural training ground
Mercer started with 26 students in its first class of nursing students at the Macon campus. The school is accepting applications for its second class, which will begin in August, with new enrollment expected to increase to 35 to 40 students, Barbé said.
“Within the next couple of years, I expect enrollment on the Macon campus to significantly increase, and we are expecting an increase of new students on the Atlanta campus as well,” she said. New enrollment in the bachelor’s of nursing program for the 2025-2026 academic year in Atlanta was 171 and is projected to increase to over 200 this year, Barbé shared.
Credit: Roger Idenden, Mercer University
Credit: Roger Idenden, Mercer University
“Now that we have the program in Macon, we’re excited to see more nurses moving into central Georgia,” she said. “We expect that by recruiting, educating and graduating students in central Georgia more of them will stay in that area to practice.”
Costner plans to be one of them. She said her focus will be on serving patients in rural communities that lack immediate access to health care and often only see a doctor once a year. Through her classes and clinical training, she said she’s learned how crucial nurses are in helping Georgia’s health care disparities.
“I think the shortage kind of highlighted the weaknesses in the health care system. It definitely influenced me … knowing I’d always have a secure job.”
Roni Robbins has been a journalist for nearly four decades. This is her second stint as a freelance reporter for the AJC. She was formerly a freelance reporter and editor for Medscape. Her writing has appeared in WebMD, HuffPost, Forbes, the New York Daily News, BioPharma Dive, MNN, Adweek, Healthline and others. She’s also the author of the award-winning novel, “Hands of Gold: One Man’s Quest to Find the Silver Lining in Misfortune.”
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