Nursing Wages Rise, Shortage Continues (The Morning News)

...I suggest that in not too many years there will be more nurses than needed, but with an extreme shortage in certain areas such as CRNA's, NNPs, ANP's and Master's and PhD nurses. We'll just have to see.

Alot of hospitals only hire new grads 2xs a year so you end up waiting 6 months just to get an interview. This has been my experience. Then I wonder humm nursing shortage? The reason why is because they train new grads in groups. Wish there was some other way. I'm going nuts.

I'm already seeing that. At one hospital all of the nurses were talking about "the good ol' days" of 4 to 7 years ago when they could work all of the overtime they wanted. One nurse hadn't worked any overtime in 6 months! It's getting more difficult at my hospital to move to different departments.

I honestly think nursing schools should start putting the breaks on flooding the market with new grads; some schools want to increase enrollment by 100% in the next few years. When I graduated only 5 to 10% of my class had no job when they graduated; now it's about 15%.

What people don't understand is that there is no "true" shortage of nurses. There were approximately 450,000 RNs that are not working in nursing at all 3 years ago and there were about 100,000 open nursing positions in the U.S. Many of those nurses have come back to the workforce because working conditions have improved. When California passed their ratio laws about 10,000 RNs that left the profession came back to it!


I bet new graduate RNs will have a difficult time finding a job in about 5 years.