I know in my capitalistic heart of hearts the only solution to the"nursing shortage" is to pay a professional wage! People will "want" to become nurses. If a nurse could indeed afford to live in a home, drive a nicer automobile, raise a family, purchase nicer things, take vacations, and do the same things as other professionals on one salary - that one being the one of the nurse - poof, the nursing shortage would be solved.
I am quite tired of hearing limp wristed proposals where special moneys are made available for new nurses training as an enticement to enter the profession. This simply does not work! It is a so called band aid on a gaping wound! Make the compensation for the new modern nursing function
significant enough to attract people into it.
Make them pay for the education themselves. Borrowing, as I did, or doing whatever they feel necessary to raise the funds to go to College. Make the expense simply a part of becoming a Registered Nurse.
I do not ever seem to recall any national problem recruiting prospective students into becoming lawyers, doctors, business (MBA's CEO's) , or any other "profession." The reason is plainly because these disciplines provide monetary compensation for the education needed to attain it after they are earned.
Nursing simply does not sufficiently reward practitioners, if we can even be called that. The financial rewards (gain) necessary to attract enough people enough to endure the educational,financial, emotional, physical, and other stressors and risks for such poor remuneration. Simply put the risks of Nursing significantly outweigh the gains to most people who are considering a career choice. This makes it a poor choice for
any success minded youngster to enter practice as an RN.
It should not be unheard of for every RN to make $100,000 in 2002 dollars! It should be the norm for a beginning Registered Nurse. Paying a pittance for one of the highest stressed jobs in the world should no longer be tolerated. With this money comes the respect from administration, government, and every one else in our capitalistic society.
At that rate of pay the profession will attract successful people.
Nursing will no longer be the domain of a "washing machine" wage earner. No more emptying the trash, filling out redundant forms having the same information written on page after page. Supplemental staff would be available to perform the non-nursing "additional duties" currently assigned because a nurse is not really valued.
Bean counters and efficiency experts would be brought in to help hospitals and other places where nurses work to effectively limit the non-nursing tasks we do not need to do and should not be doing. Nurses would dictate notes and have a transcriptionist to print them.
I sound greedy to some: the altruistic, the administrators, the
government, and perhaps to the public at large. Earning about $40,000 a year, as the average nurse does, is very poor compensation in comparison to the true nursing functions we perform every day. We commit an egregious injustice to young people attempting to entice them into a poorly compensated highly stressful position in nursing.
Managed care will scream we do not have that kind of money to pay. Government will clamor that the budget does not support that kind of expense for nursing. Perhaps they are right! I do not believe this is true.
When all is said and done the only thing that will attract people into a field is a promise of significant earnings - period! Do we want nurses or are we as a country really saying that we do not want nurses. Put your money where your mouth is! Pay Registered Nurses as if they were valued. Everything else will magically fall into place!
