There IS a nursing shortage

[HeartsOpenWide]

Ugh, I have read my last thread that says "there is no nursing shortage"...yes, we all know there are nurses out there that are not practicing, for various reasons , but if those nurses are not working then there is a nursing shortage, if those nurses are not working then there aren't enough nurses to care for the upcoming baby boomer aging....you can say, "there is not a nursing shortage" until you are blue in the face, but unless the nonpracticing nurses go back to work as nurses there IS a nursing shortage. And there probably always will be with the stats they give of most nurses quiting withing the first 4 years; maybe less attention should be focused on the nursing shortage and more light shed on WHY there is a nursing shorted...those various reasons....

[AtomicWoman]

The market for new grads here in Philadelphia/South Jersey is just abysmal. Hiring freezes, layoffs, etc. have combined to make hospitals reluctant to hire GNs when they have their pick of experienced nurses (or nurses aren't leaving the profession at the same rate. Or both.). This was absolutely NOT true just a few years ago -- GNs found jobs quickly when they graduated.

[jjjoy, LPN]

If a true nursing shortage existed, nurses would be paid awesome money, not an average salary of $50k to $70k annually.

Is that necessarily true, though? I always hear that the reason that illegal immigrants find so much work as farm laborers or other low wage "menial" work is because there aren't enough native-born folks willing to take those jobs. However, if they raised the wages and improved the working conditions, I'd imagine they could find plenty of US citizens willing to do those jobs. So there's a "shortage" of US born folks willing to do farm labor but the pay still isn't awesome. (I recognize that this isn't a simple issue. I can only imagine how much local produce would cost if farm labor paid better and the likelihood that we'd just end up importing cheaper produce from abroad.)

Or, look at teacher salaries. Difficult districts can have a hard time recruiting and retaining staff. They may pay teachers quite a bit more than private schools or a "cushy" district, but the teachers certainly are not making in the the six figures. Again, there may be "shortage" of teachers (especially math and science) but they don't get awesome pay.

Nursing wages in many places are pretty goodand so we now have long waiting lists to get into nursing school. In spite of that, we are still having trouble retaining nurses in the places they are most needed. Better wages alone aren't an answer, I don't think. In too many places it's literally impossible to give the kind of care one ought to as a nurse. Again, it's not a simple issue. If facilities provide an ideal number of staff round the clock, along with great wages, how much more astronomically expensive would a hospital stay or extended nursing home residency be?

Sigh!! I wish there were more easy answers!

[Agrippa]

UNION

!!!!!!!!!!!