Nursing Shortage: New Grad or Experienced

Nurses General Nursing

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  1. Is the mysterious, often quoted, seemingly nonexistant 'Nursing shortage' related to:

    • 12
      Lack of experienced nurses
    • 3
      Lack of all types of nurses (including new grads)
    • 30
      A marketing ploy to increase school revenues
    • 6
      Other (please explain below)

51 members have participated

Nurses!

I know this topic has been beaten to death, but after reading a thread re: importing more Nurses, i had to ask:

Is the mysterious 'Nursing shortage' related to:

1. Lack of EXPERIENCED nurses

2. Lack of ANY nurses e.g New Grads (which going by the posts here seems kind of unlikely)

3. A ploy to increase revenue by schools.

Thoughts?

I don't believe it's a ploy. Before the economy turned sour, nobody wanted to be a nurse because you could make a lot more money doing other things that didn't involve backbreaking work, personal risk, and exposure to poop and deadly bacterium. The economy turned and everyone rushed to nursing school because within a couple of years you could be making a somewhat decent living without a huge time and money commitment for schooling.

LOL! ...and I'd have to be really smart, to want to do this? LOL. No one can see it now, but I am crying with laghter, and rolling on the floor...because I just know this one is true.

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So...how does this all translate to cost savings, and not being penny wise and pound foolish?

Sometimes, I try to grasp how holding off the expense of training new grad RNs saves the healthcare system money. I wonder if there is a plot to wear-out as many experienced RN's as possible, while keeping mass numbers of new grads in a holding pattern. (If large numbers in the workforce are all completely worn out, such that they drop dead before retiring... that might save the expense of long-term care for them down the road and they won't have drawn on the nations social security resources so heavily.) As the experienced RN's make a mass exodus, then and only then, will the new grads be able to "make a landing"....all at once.

If this ends in cost savings, it might be due to large numbers of patients dying, as an entire system backed mostly with new grad nurses hits the learning curve - all at the same time. After resulting class action claims break the bank for current healthcare providers and several go under, new healthcare providers will take over.

Hopefully, the economic fallout will not result in another "recession", and patients won't be paying their bills with chickens. The good thing is, there are experienced experts to consult. America could check with the worlds' developing nations on creating a new, U.S. healthcare model based on a global healthcare model...wich allows for client payments in chicken curency - If large numbers of sick people die, the ratio of healthy people in the population will be higher. So...overall healthcare costs will go down...then I realize, "Well, that just sounds like hell. I'm not dead yet." So I stop studying. I say a prayer that all of hell will not break loose, and then I go to sleep.

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If the US dolar does go under and a new curency name is to be chosen, I vote that the new US currency be called, the American chicken.

Specializes in Med/Surgical; Critical Care; Geriatric.

I think it relates more to "baby boomer" aged nurses, like myself, leaving the bedside do to retirement, burn-out, or injury.

I work in a large hospital system in Central Indiana and learned recently that a large percentage of our night shift nursing staff in ICU are going to be new grads most likely BSN since we're going for Magnet status. It will definitely be challenging to help these new nurses get comfortable in their "new skins"and become competent in a busy ICU.

Rhonda

Specializes in medical surgical.

We export for cheaper labor. We import for the same.

Specializes in Med Surg - Renal.
And schools love shoving that crock of **** statistic about nursing shortages. I seriously feel insulted that people just go into nursing thinking its easy money for a 2 year degree.

I just graduated and I never got any of that from any instructor or staff at my community college. They were always honest and straightforward about the employment situation.

Specializes in Acute Ortho/Neuro, Hospice, Skilled/LTC.

I just finished my RN-BSN and I heard the instructors talking about the "nursing shortage" all of the time. This was very frustrating to me and about half of the class that were "new-grads-who-couldn't-get-a-job-so-went-for-BSN-to-fill-time." I asked the instructor where this shortage is because I want to go there and was told the shortage is in "nursing instructors." That's when I knew these people were totally out-of-touch academic idiots. Why would the nursing schools want to turn out more nurses when the one's out there can't even get the first job.

I've been licensed almost a year now so even though some of the nursing internships are starting to open up again, I (as I've been told by a nurse recruiter) don't qualify for them because it's been a year since I graduated.

There doesn't really seem to be a way out of this mess.

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