Nursing remains popular, but affected by recession

I'm glad to see SOME attention paid to this issue, but the outlook of the article was a little positive... not once mentioning how difficult it is for new nurses to find the first job. How can there be hiring freezes but ALSO the same amount of demand for nurses?

I live in NY and there have lots of hiring freezes! The community college I attend has 900 nursing students and only 25 day spots and 20 evening spots for clinicals per semester! People with 4.0 have been waiting years I have heard to start their clinicals!

Alot of the clinical places have been pulling out, so this is causing a pile up of students waiting for rotations! Too many nursing students and no where to put them!

I am starting to wonder if their is going to be TOO MANY nurses in a few years? No one ever thinks of that?

In the Radiology depts they are putting out hundreds of students and their are no jobs for them. The whole healthcare field in "hot" talk is making for too many students now and not enough jobs! Now everyone wants to be a nurse and their will be no one to fill positions in other industries.

I agree, overall it seemed a pretty rosy outlook. It certainly didn't seem to reflect the sentiments expressed on the MA region board of this website. There are plenty of threads there started by people who've already graduated from nursing programs who are struggling to find a job in Massachusetts.

I hope that the young lady featured in the article that wants to become a nurse will stay at the bedside if she successfully trains and passes her boards. The situation with nurses getting laid off and hiring freezes seem to happen in cycles- at least it has since I've been in nursing. But, irregardless of the layoffs and freezes, we'll still need nursing manpower to provide services as the country's population ages. My hope is that the provision of health care will become more community-based and that the medical community once and for all will decide to teach and promote prevention and well-being as opposed to sickness.

I know a few hospitals down here in CA were having hiring freezes. The hospital I worked at even had a bunch of layoffs. Hope this all gets better soon.

My VA has a "soft freeze" for now. New grads aren't being hired except for the residency program. (BSN only and 12 slots for Jan.)

HCMC has zero posted positions.

Times are tight for now on the tundra....

I am definately feeling the "freeze" in Philadelphia area. Most of my graduating class have yet to find jobs. I am looking at online programs towards a masters degree. Figure I could ride out the recession getting some more education.

I've noticed that they report nursing shortages, encouraging an increase in new nurses, then they put hiring freezes in place causing an over supply of nurses at the same time that they are trying to force an increase in nurse/patient ratio's above what is safe. Seems to me they are trying to create an an over abundance of nurses needing jobs to weaken what little power nurses have to affect their job enviornment. Once nurses are " a dime a dozen" we can be easily replaced if we don't tow the line. I expect we will soon see nationwide salary decreases "in response to the recession as well. The absolute necessity of nurse salaries is the only factor the corporations have not been to reduce to increase profits thus far. I think they've found a way. It's taking them a while to get all the domino's in place, but I think they'll be ready to start the fall before too much longer. There's a book called CODE GREEN that explains how all this started and where it is going, and while it is taking years to accomplish they are still on track and headed for thier goal. Eventualy all this profit based medicine will implode and knock it's self out. People can only afford so much. When that time comes, NP's and Naturopathic's will be in high demand as people can no longer afford Corporate medicine or insurance as the recession continues and unemployeement increases.

And that is why we need to strengthen our voice on the job through organinzing strong unions at our hospitals.