Having to tell people there is no nursing shortage

Asystole RN · Jul 17, 2012

But you use it in the context that diploma programs were created with the purpose of relieving a nursing shortage by giving them less training (which implies that they are inferior) when in fact diploma schools were the first organized nursing education. And you have to admit, regardless of who coined the term, it is a bit inflammatory.

The term short-trained nursing may make people feel somehow a lesser form of nurse but I can assure you that the term is not pejorative in nature. The fact is that LPNs, Dilpoma nurses, and ADN nurses are used as staffing tools. Regardless of the quality of the individual nurse, the reason we have various levels of nursing is to suit administrative marketplace needs.

Susie2310 · Jul 17, 2012

I recently read a blog by a tax expert who referred to the mass unemployment the UK has. He commented that one of the political parties wants it that way so that their business cronies can hire and fire people just as they need them. The notion of expendable workers.

Hire someone for a few weeks; fire them when they're not needed. A surplus of workers is very good for employer's business models. I thought about the surplus of nurses in the US, and about employers' hiring and firing practices, and the laws that support these practices. I thought about the nursing schools (businesses) churning out new nurses, and the nursing schools and health care industry lamenting a shortage of nurses. I even remember when the governor of my state was talking about the nursing shortage and the need for more nurses (more money for nursing programs) (more nurses to supply businesses' business models).

Throughout history overpopulation has led to lowered wages and working conditions. Today, because of technology and the large world population, there are more people than jobs. So we are back in the same spiral.

To the OP, please don't feel that you've done anything wrong. This is just the way the world works.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Jul 17, 2012

The term short-trained nursing may make people feel somehow a lesser form of nurse but I can assure you that the term is not pejorative in nature. The fact is that LPNs, Diploma nurses, and ADN nurses are used as staffing tools. Regardless of the quality of the individual nurse, the reason we have various levels of nursing is to suit administrative marketplace needs.

Is this what they are teaching? Wow......again I am disappointed by my profession. It seems to be a recurring theme.....sigh.

In the days gone by, before there were BSN nurses, the diploma/ASN/ADN, these so called "short trained" nurses were the only nurses. Good Ole Flo trained the camp followers (prostitutes) hygiene and to assist with the sick and injured. The first form of on the job training, elevating their lot in life, AND elevating the care of the sick and injured therefore elevating the profession of nursing.

In the beginning, the diploma nurse was the highest education of a nurse at the time and that the addition of ADN/ASN nurse was another elevation of nursing education to a professionally trained level. This was done to improve the professional as a whole and without these ground breaking nurses there would not be a masters program look down and analyze the rest of the lesser "educated" of the profession as cheap staffing fillers.

Many moons ago, "in the good ole days", people used to be promoted for their stellar performance as a working nurse and a professional example of the title "NURSE". For their knowledge and performance. The respect and admiration that they had earned by just being a good nurse and not how long she spent in a classroom. They lead by example which made them were easy to follow.

How sad that academia today has decided to look down upon these valuable individuals, and teach that these individuals, are a lesser participant of the profession they are supposedly trying to advance. This behavior annoys and greatly disappoints me. I have always said that nurses were going to educate themselves right out of the bedside and that maybe all this push for higher degrees would somehow damage the bedside nurse.....make it less "honorable" to be at the bedside.

I personally believe that even a masters degree nurse wishes her bedside nurse to be experienced and well trained bedside nurse and not just one who has spent extra time in college when you arrive having the big MI or drop your pressure after your CABG at 3 am. I believe that it is the bedside education and experience that make the good nurse and not necessarily the degree.

You need to know where you have been to see clearly where you are going.

The diploma programs were developed as a "staffing tool" in the 40's in order to draw fresh blood into the nursing field (the battle field that is).....AND to elevate the profession from just being one of on the job training to it being organized education. Making nursing be a respected, participating, educated part of the medical team.......and because not every one wanted to become a nun just to be a nurse.

To minimize the importance, honor, and dedication it takes to be a good bedside nurse saddens me, :sniff: disapponts me:cool:, angers me greatly:madface:.

What are "we" becomming and where will "we" end up? :confused:

Just my honest opinion and :twocents: :paw:

caliotter3 · Jul 17, 2012

I recently read a blog by a tax expert who referred to the mass unemployment the UK has. He commented that one of the political parties wants it that way so that their business cronies can hire and fire people just as they need them. The notion of expendable workers.
Hire someone for a few weeks; fire them when they're not needed. A surplus of workers is very good for employer's business models. I thought about the surplus of nurses in the US, and about employers' hiring and firing practices, and the laws that support these practices. I thought about the nursing schools (businesses) churning out new nurses, and the nursing schools and health care industry lamenting a shortage of nurses. I even remember when the governor of my state was talking about the nursing shortage and the need for more nurses (more money for nursing programs) (more nurses to supply businesses' business models).
Throughout history overpopulation has led to lowered wages and working conditions. Today, because of technology and the large world population, there are more people than jobs. So we are back in the same spiral.
To the OP, please don't feel that you've done anything wrong. This is just the way the world works.

This reminds me of the situation a couple of decades ago, when the local hospital commenced with layoffs. They started with housekeeping and eventually got to the nursing department. How fascinating that not even a year went by when I saw large banner ads in the nearest major newspaper looking for nursing staff. One month you get rid of your nurses because you "can't afford" them, but four or five months later, all of a sudden, you find the need to advertise for nurses? One would have to be pretty stupid not to see through that one. A very apropos example of the "nursing shortage" in action.

CrunchRN, ADN, RN · Jul 17, 2012

The public needs educating. It is extremely tiresome. However, the whole "nursing shortage" thing is still in the news all the time even though not true.

FlyingScot, RN · Jul 17, 2012

The term short-trained nursing may make people feel somehow a lesser form of nurse but I can assure you that the term is not pejorative in nature. The fact is that LPNs, Dilpoma nurses, and ADN nurses are used as staffing tools. Regardless of the quality of the individual nurse, the reason we have various levels of nursing is to suit administrative marketplace needs.

So let me get this straight. You believe that the nurses with this type of education are merely warm bodies used to fill an empty slot and it really doesn't matter if they are any good at all. But if a BSN or above is doing the exact same job filling the exact same slot they are being used for a different reason? Although I have advanced my education I'm pretty sure the 8 thousand APA format papers did not make me a better nurse than I was with a lowly diploma. Referring to Diploma/ADN/LPN nurses as staffing tools is an insult and I agree with Esme I am horrified that this is what you are being taught. How can you say being a short-trained staffing tool isn't pejorative. I am not a shovel I am a nurse with a brain. I hope the Koolaid tastes good.

netglow, ASN, RN · Jul 17, 2012

Asystole RN, your reasoning sounds ill-informed and goofy. Maybe you were not able to convey your ideas in words well? If you meant to say there really is not much difference between the levels, in actual practice ability when all is said and done (as we all know, unless in full denial) being reflective of level LPN/Diploma/ADN. That having "levels" within the profession is just for "appearances" that are marketing related - I agree.

We all understand that it's the actual on the job clinical exposure that makes a nurse. The degree level is meaningless for your regular RN majority. APN is something totally different than your regular RN, and delineation can be made at that level IMHO.

edit: to include BSN in the mix of regular RNs.

2BRN123 · Jul 17, 2012

Interesting idea that Diploma programs are a newer phenomenon. All 4/5 of the diploma programs in my city were founded 10-30 years before women were allowed to VOTE, let alone attending Bachelors degree granting institutions en masse so they don't "fall short" of their BSN's that I'm not sure even existed at the time. Hell, the University of Pittsburgh had a nursing school for 30 years before they even started granting BSN's, and they own the hospital system responsible for 3/5 of the diploma schools...

I think the timeline that you're learning is a little skewed, for whatever reason because of ADN's. The opportunity to obtain an Associates Degree in a wide variety of areas is definitely a much more recent and common phenomenon (with the explosion of tech schools and availability of CC educations).

Diploma nursing education has just been a simply fundamental part of the nursing career, I think that ADN's and BSN's are an extension and advancement of the credential, but certainly were not the historic standard.

Another of Asystole's points I find interesting is that short training hospital based programs weren't invested in quality. Weren't most diploma programs thriving and in their "hey-day" back before hospitals were mega conglomerations of university health systems and privately held share-holder managed institutions?

I was always under the impression that Diploma programs trained the nurses they wanted, the way they wanted them to work. You know, defending their reputation and standards by training their own. Perhaps I'm wrong?

Moreover, the fact that one can obtain, from REPUTABLE UNIVERSITIES, a BSN degree (after already having their RN ), without any additional clinical hours, totally online, not having to set foot in a classroom, speaks volumes of where the quality of our education is going. Not just in nursing, but in all industries.... across the board.

CrunchRN, ADN, RN · Jul 17, 2012

What WAS this thread about? :smokin:

Asystole RN · Jul 17, 2012

Esme12

The term short-trained was never once used as a pejorative term, either in the text books or in the classroom. It is simply a descriptive term, something that people on this website read as a pejorative. We do discuss, however, that the main resistance to creating the BSN nurse the entry level of education to the profession comes from hospital administration. This by no means is a declaration of removing nurses with other training/education from the profession, rather, creating a uniformed minimum level of education for entry, like what the Philippines and Korea have.

In order to become a true profession nursing has to have control over the education and practice of nursing. Unfortunately, nursing has historically been dominated by a paternalistic and authoritarian system. We have come a long way from the old days when a nurse would jump at the command of the MD but there are still areas where we are controlled from without. One of the areas is in education, we are still largely controlled by the will of the hospitals. This is one of the reasons why the diploma programs largely went away, to remove the control of education from the hospital.

Florence Nightingale never dealt with prostitutes and to the contrary was a vocal leader against it. Nightingale was an upper class white woman who only invited other upper class white women of sound character to join her ranks of nursing. See Mary Seacole.

rn/writer, RN · Jul 17, 2012

Only a tiny percentage of those who think there's a nursing shortage really care about the details. For the rest, eight words will suffice.

"There used to be one. There isn't one now." Then change the subject to Aunt Sally's new boyfriend or what naughty Cousin Alex has been up to lately.

DeLana_RN, BSN, RN · Jul 17, 2012

Moreover, the fact that one can obtain, from REPUTABLE UNIVERSITIES, a BSN degree (after already having their RN ), without any additional clinical hours, totally online, not having to set foot in a classroom, speaks volumes of where the quality of our educations is going. Not just in nursing, but in all industries.... across the board.

This bothers me, too. Especially since I have witnessed the kind of cheating that can go when someone "earns" such a degree...

Of course, most student probably don't cheat, but it's clear that it's a lot easier to do than in a traditional classroom setting... plus the instructor/student interaction, etc. is just missing. But it's the future... get used to it.