Patients often have a story about a compassionate nurse. You call a nurse when the pain is unbearable or when you just want to hear a friendly voice in the middle of the night. In Sierra Leone, 15 nurses have recently died while taking care of Ebola patients. It's hard to imagine any health-care system functioning without the dedication of these professionals.

Yet we are facing a worldwide nursing crisis in the next decade. The demand is expected to be greater than the supply here in Harris County as well. Some reasons for the shortage: Millions of people have signed up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act. As the baby boom generation ages, more of the population will experience health challenges. Aging nurses are retiring and need to be replaced. The percentage of nurses employed in environments outside of hospitals and clinics is growing. Finally, the shortage of nurses can lead to overwork, then burn out of younger nurses.

Houston's institutions are responding. University of St. Thomas just reopened its nursing school after a 26-year hiatus and graduated its first class of nurses. However, there's a stumbling block to broad progress: a shortage of nurse educators. There's no question that if schools in the Houston area had more nursing faculty, they could graduate more students, says Kathryn Tart, founding dean of the University of Houston-Victoria's School of Nursing. To teach at nursing schools, educators need a graduate degree.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston School of Nursing recently started an online master's degree program. Prairie View A&M University has developed a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree program, a practical rather than research-oriented, post-master's degree. Nonprofits like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are providing funding to create a more highly educated and diverse nursing workforce.

Despite progress, the teaching pipeline for nurses needs our continued attention. Nursing schools have a hard time matching the high salaries of industry. Our colleges and universities, health-care businesses and nonprofits, hospitals and clinics must collaborate to find innovative ways to recruit and train the nursing educators needed to teach our nursing students their profession and ease the impending nursing crisis.

An acute nursing shortage could raise mortality rates, as well as health-care costs. This critical problem requires attention now.