I read recently that only 12% of all nurses are under the age of 30. Being a new graduate BSN and practicing nursing for 18 months, I found that statistic pretty horrifying. I have been visiting this site for about three months now and various nurses are trying to find out solutions to the nursing shortage and who to blame.
First off I think nurses need to share some of that blame. Like I said am a new nurse that graduated with my BSN and also with a Business degree. So I am keen to pick up on why things do not work. First off our normal nursing class size usually max out at thirty-five students. Our class started out with 27 students because the program did not receive enough applications to fill the class. During my last two years we lost 5 students out of the program not because of low grade or they failed out, most were top of our class, mostly because of lack of respect they received from nursing instructors and nursing staff at the local hospitals where we did our clinical.
LPN's and Rn's alike would ridicule most of the students. They would openly complain about us to the patients and to staff members alike. During report we would hear the RN's say "al my gosh we have students today, today would be a good day to call in sick". Don't get me wrong there was some educators that did a good gob and greeted us with open arms, but a majority of the time the staff was very disrespectful from RN's to Nursing Assistant's. Most of the teaching came from physicians if we had the opportunity to rounds with.
After graduation I passed my boards on the first try and took a job on a Medical Surgical floor. The first night was highly anticipated and was looking forward to my new career. I reported to the charge nurse who did not expect me and did not know who to put me with. Eventually they put me with a LVN who was very intolerable to teaching others and I seemed like a burden to her. Eventually I just left and told the charge nurse I was very disappointed by the way things was run here and left in middle of my shift.
Eventually I did land a job that did really well in teaching me the ins and outs of nursing. I would actually check on my fellow graduates after a year of last seeing them. One of my fellow students informed me that four other nurses got out of nursing they did not feel safe with the patient load given to them and very little mentoring from senior nurses.
I am 26 years of age, kind of old for a new graduate. I worked in other professions such and engineering as a drafter and sales. Never have I worked in a profession that fellow professionals were so rude and uncaring to each other. I have several friends who are physicians that talked me to going back to school and finish my classes to apply to Medical School, they openly joke about how nurses are very disrespectfully to each other and how senior nurses eat their young.
If the nursing profession were such a great career as most of you described, there would not be a shortage. I agree that that the aging baby boomer poses a challenge and is one of the reasons but I think we need to look in the mirror and accept some of the blame.
So in closing if you get a new graduated in the floor, accept them with open arms instead of treating them like a burden.
