Perspectives from Academic Leaders of the Nursing Faculty Shortage in Canada.

There is a world-wide shortage of nursing faculty, which is complicated by the need for French, English, and bilingual professors in Canada. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the current status and effects of the nursing faculty shortage on Canadian Schools of Nursing (SON) from a leadership perspective. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 Deans and Directors of Canadian Schools of Nursing. The participants spoke about the faculty shortage in terms of demand, supply, and strategies employed. The participants were concerned about the ramifications of some of the decisions deemed necessary for continued viability of their programs, such as over-assigning teaching workloads. In light of mass upcoming retirements, shortening the time to completion for PhD studies and making graduate education more accessible are important priorities.

Critical telomerase activity for uncontrolled cell growth.

The lengths of the telomere regions of chromosomes in a population of cells are modelled using a chemical master equation formalism, from which the evolution of the average number of cells of each telomere length is extracted. In particular, the role of the telomere-elongating enzyme telomerase on these dynamics is investigated. We show that for biologically relevant rates of cell birth and death, one finds a critical rate, R crit, of telomerase activity such that the total number of cells diverges. Further, R crit is similar in magnitude to the rates of mitosis and cell death. The possible relationship of this result to replicative immortality and its associated hallmark of cancer is discussed.