Yesterday, today, and tomorrow: challenges in securing federal support for graduate nursing education.

The nursing shortage continues to escalate while literally thousands of qualified applicants are being turned away from nursing schools across the nation, largely because of insufficient numbers of nursing faculty. In this article, we attempt to summarize the scope of the current nursing faculty shortage, discuss the role of federal policies in contributing to and addressing the problem, and propose policy strategies for expanding the capacity of the current and future pool of nursing faculty.