PHOENIX - A nurse advocacy group says legislation that would delegate nursing home duties to less skilled workers rather than registered nurses will threaten patients' safety and make it harder for UA nursing students to find jobs.

The Southern Arizona Nurses Coalition is opposing bills introduced by Rep. Deb Gullet, R-Phoenix, which would create a pilot program allowing certified nursing assistants to administer medication to nursing home patients, and allowing minimally trained workers to assist feeding at the homes.

Gullet said the programs are simply a response to a statewide nursing crisis, and that they could potentially free up skilled nurses to attend to more advanced tasks.

"Both the bills are designed for the nursing industry to allow nurses to have an opportunity to do some nursing," Gullet said. "Right now we have more jobs than we have nurses."

Opponents say the move panders to the health care industry that wants to pay workers less at the sake of harming nursing home patients, said Jane Black, co-coordinator of SANC.

"I am concerned with this kind of encroachment on the practice," Black said. "It takes more of the work normally done by registered nurses and licensed nurses and gives it to untrained workers."

Until now administering medication and feeding nursing home- bound patients were the duties of registered and licensed nurses. Black said the legislation would undermine the quality of care the patients will receive.

"Anyone with a family member in a nursing home should be concerned about these proposals," Black said.

Anyone with a family member in a nursing home should be concerned about these proposals. - Jane Black, co-coordinator of the Southern Arizona Nurses Coalition

Black said the bills would farm out jobs to unskilled workers and suppress wages without improving the nursing shortage.

"You are not going to attract more people to a job that they ultimately want to leave in the end because of the work environment," Black said.

Carla Mundt, a third-semester nursing student, said relieving nurses of the ability to medicate could put nursing home patients in danger.

"Anybody that doesn't have an education shouldn't be passing medication," she said.

Mundt, who worked as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home, said she wouldn't have been qualified to give patients medication.

"I wouldn't have had the right to pass medication."

Kiesha MacLean, also a third-semester nursing student, said nursing students spend hours learning about drugs and their effects before being able to give them to patients.

Such rigorous training is necessary to ensure the patient's well-being, MacLean said.

One of the bills however, is a pilot program that could ultimately be revoked if it didn't work out. Gullet said that in the end she felt something must be done to remedy what some have called a nursing crisis.

"We've got to do something," Gullet said. "When there are certainly more jobs than they have nurses for and they have registered nurses distributing basic medication."

Gov. Janet Napolitano established a Nursing Shortage Task Force in 2002 to address the mounting statewide shortage in nurses. And Napolitano recently gave Northern Arizona University $1 million for its nursing program to attract more nursing students.

The national nursing shortage is estimated at 126,000 in hospitals alone and is expected to reach 800,000 by 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Arizona is projected to have a shortage of more than 8,000 nurses by 2005, according to the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association.

By 2010, the shortage is expected to rise to more than 10,000.

The 2000 census reported that the population of Arizona had grown by 30 percent in the past decade. But according to the Governor's Taskforce, the number of new registered nursing graduates in Arizona has remained relatively unchanged for the same period.

Arizona has fewer registered nurses per 100,000 residents than the national average, and the annual turnover rate for nurses in Arizona is higher than the national average.

These facts, Gullet said, are reason enough give the bills a chance.

"We hope to alleviate the problems facing nurses," Gullet said. "If (the pilot program) doesn't work, we'll stop it."