[brian]

A year ago, the projections were dire. By this year, California would need 201,000 nurses to fill hospitals, nursing facilities and home-health organizations, a shortage of 20,000 nurses. Worse still, that estimate was before new laws required hospitals to raise their nurse-to-patient ratio from 1:6 to 1:5 by this January, round the clock.


For local hospitals, the current numbers represented a 35 percent shortage, or 2,000 registered nurses in San Francisco alone. And for smaller hospitals, many of which already had ratios of 1:9 or 1:10, those requirements were overwhelming.

It was enough to spur all sides of the issue into action -- so much so that today, there are 224,000 licensed nurses working in California, according to the Board of Registered Nursing.

Much of the increase can be attributed to existing nurses obtaining their first license, or renewing their license after it had expired.

Full Story: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranci...18/focus2.html