[Nursing News]

California needs more nurses, not more lawyers
American Thinker, AZ - 1 hour ago

As the University of California, Irvine presses its case for a brand new law school despite an official finding that California's supply of lawyers is more than adequate, there is a genuine and urgent need to train more nurses. Dan Walters, the pre-eminent Sacramento columnist, who joined me in opposing the US Irvine law school boondoggle, today compares the need for nurses with the lack of need for lawyers, and wonders why the university flaunts the public good.

Even though there's been a significant increase in training programs in recent years, the state has an estimated 17,000 qualified nursing applicants on schools' waiting lists.

The Legislature's budget analyst, Elizabeth Hill, issued a report on the state's looming shortage of nurses in May, noting that the University of California, in a study by its San Francisco medical school, forecast a demand for registered nurses in 2014 that's 40,000 higher than the current forecast of supply, given retirement and other factors.

Demand will continue to outpace supply, at least from in-state sources, as baby-boom generation nurses retire and they and other members of that immense cohort require more nursing care.

More... California needs more nurses, not more lawyers - American Thinker

[oramar]

Law schools produce alumni that bring prestige to a university, not to mention the large donations the alumni will eventually make. In a world that had it values right, Schools of Nursing also bring prestige but they don't, they are also highly unlikely to produce wealthy alumni. At least all those numbskulls at the university that wants the law school will have a lawyer to call when they carry their injured child into ER and there is no one to care for them.

[Eric Scott]

Bravo!! I TOTALLY agree....

[EricJRN]

You can build nursing schools all you want, but until the pay is high enough to attract qualified faculty members away from other opportunities in nursing, we can't accept more applicants into those schools.

The other way to work on the nursing shortage is to improve working conditions to improve working conditions in hospitals to a point where the thousands of unemployed nurses would consider coming back.

[rplnurse]

If California is so short of nurses why is it so hard for me to get out of Cresant City? I have been working through a traveling nurse agency for 6 mo but still no assignment. ICU, ER and Tele will even do med-surge.

[hbgwan]

This country needs another lawyer like it needs a hole in the head.

[JaneyW]

UCI just opened a nursing school. They will need 35 faculty members (NPs and PhDs) over the next 5-7 years as the program expand from BSN to PhD. Where will all these faculty come from?