It's a very good question. Thank you.
We have to realize that in the early 1990s, 12,000 nurses were graduating every year. We went down to 4,000 across the country by 1999, and we're now up to 8,000. I don't have the numbers for doctors offhand, but the numbers are very similar. Why? Because of budget cutbacks; this big report came out saying that too many were graduating.
We're going up, but what's also happening is that at the university level they don't have the funding to educate those with master's degrees or doctorates in terms of preparing them to help the faculties of nursing. The average age of a nurse is 45 or 46, and for a nursing teacher it's 48 or 49. Those are the average ages.
So we have a lot of work to do at the university level, and then to help the hospitals' long-term care facilities. Training of a nurse is done not only behind a desk; it's done with direct patient care as well.