Do you think there will be a nursing "draft" someday?

Nurses General Nursing

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This might be a bit of a scary scenario, for many reasons, but...

Do you think the bedside nursing shortage will get so bad that the government will resort to conscription someday - essentially a "draft" requiring everyone do their bit to take care of our nation's ailing and elderly?

Can you envision a future where young people go to say, LPN bootcamp for intense training, and then are required to do a year of bedside nursing?

Anyway, that might seem a fantastical scenario; but maybe not so far out there.

It just seems that there are few incentives, and lots of counter-incentives, for young people to go into bedside nursing anymore, realistically speaking (i.e., other job options, the increasingly stressful and money-centered nature of health care, litigiousness, etc., etc., etc.)

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Specializes in PCU, Home Health.

I don't ever see this happening- but I think it would be an eye opener.

I do think that everyone should work in a service industry that deals with the public when they are in their teens. I think people who have worked behind a cash register or served as a waiter know how to treat people better. Of course there are people who will never learn that lesson and seem incapable of it.

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I hope not!!! I wouldn't want someone to take care of me who doesn't want to! I think incentive programs would be better

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No, I would think they would sooner give adequate funding to nursing schools so they can expand and let people without 4.0's in, and eliminate 2 year waitlists. There would be no nursing shortage if everyone with at least a 3.0 was given a shot to become a nurse.

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Specializes in ICU/ER.
No, I would think they would sooner give adequate funding to nursing schools so they can expand and let people without 4.0's in, and eliminate 2 year waitlists. There would be no nursing shortage if everyone with at least a 3.0 was given a shot to become a nurse.

I know in my city we have 3 nursing schools that offer an ASN/RN program plus 2 or 3 that offer LPN programs. We also have some LPN schools in outlaying areas. We only have 2 major hospitals and they have (I think) 2 smaller specialty hospitals in their network. So that is 5 or 6 nursing schools and only 3 or 4 main sites to do clinicals.

So the problem is not how many nurses they can crank out, it is where will they train all the student nurses? Each RN program graduates approx 60 new students in December and May. so 60x3=180x2=360 graduating Registered nurses a year. Now run those 360 students through 2 years of clinicals and that is a lot of clinical time.

That is not counting the LPN programs that also need clinical time. Or counting the BSN students.

I think if all schools could 1) hire more teachers and 2) have more places to do clinicals then they would double or triple their enrollment if they could. They want the tuition money as badly as those who want the degree. That is why they must put the GPA requirements . They have to draw a line somewhere.

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Yes - finding clinical spots is a huge challenge for nursing schools.

Another worry is that when new grads hit the real world of bedside nursing, they may leave it after not too long.

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This might be a bit of a scary scenario, for many reasons, but...

Do you think the bedside nursing shortage will get so bad that the government will resort to conscription someday - essentially a "draft" requiring everyone do their bit to take care of our nation's ailing and elderly?

Can you envision a future where young people go to say, LPN bootcamp for intense training, and then are required to do a year of bedside nursing?

Anyway, that might seem a fantastical scenario; but maybe not so far out there.

It just seems that there are few incentives, and lots of counter-incentives, for young people to go into bedside nursing anymore, realistically speaking (i.e., other job options, the increasingly stressful and money-centered nature of health care, litigiousness, etc., etc., etc.)

I've wondered about that, too. There are so many licensed nurses who choose not to work in nursing these days. I've wondered if universal healthcare becomes law, will the shortage be so bad that they will require all licensed nurses to return to nursing under the guise of a national emergency.

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Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.

I do not see this as happening. I would refuse a nurse that was drafted against her/his will. I do think that part of the problem is rooted in the schools. Waiting list 2 or more years out...there are a lot of people that want to be nurses but the schools can take them all. They also need to keep nurses happy by paying them justly and treating them with respect.

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highly unlikely but not impossible, take for instance a flu epidemic where 50% of nurses are ill or dead, people like me(unemployed) could find themselves getting calls and being told to report to nearest hospital

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Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

LOL...I was talking to some nurses about a month ago about a dream I had. It was exactly this!!!!!

The dream was that women were drafted as nurses for a new Federal Program to make assisted living/skill nursing available to all seniors...and they made up whole cities of these facilities. Women (not men in my dream...don't know why) were drafted as young as 16 to help with the huge populations of elderly, and had to serve a 4 year mandatory duty!

It was like something out of Escape from NY! All grey and large grey buildings with manholes spewing out old people smell at every corner! Then a revolution group was being made to try to quell the numbers of elderly that resided in there, and were taking in all sorts of people to help...we are talking 'little accidents' or 'seemingly natural deaths'.

For some reason since I was already an RN, I had to do 10 years...nice huh? And was shipped to one of these places many states away so I had no contact with my family so I would be a 'good little nursie'.

It was a nightmare...and my fellow nurses and I joked that I should be a science fiction writer. We started talking about titles:

"Geri-tropolis", "Children of the Old", "hover-round highway", "Prunes of Wrath", "Walker wars", "Of nurses and old men", "Silence of the Grands", "Rocking chair horror picture show", "Little SNF of Horrors", "Lord of the wheelchairs", or our favorite "Grey Dawn"...LOL!

But seriously...I haven't seen any shortage of nurses in my area at all, and the shortages stem from facilites treating their employees like crud and can't get people to work for them! So a nursing draft no...improving work conditions for healthcare providers is what needs to be done, and actually doing this funny thing called "listening to the concerns of Nurses" should be a manatory thing is ALL facilities!!!

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"Geri-tropolis"... "Prunes of Wrath"... "Grey Dawn"

:lol2::lol2::lol2:

"But seriously...I haven't seen any shortage of nurses in my area at all, and the shortages stem from facilites treating their employees like crud and can't get people to work for them! So a nursing draft no...improving work conditions for healthcare providers is what needs to be done, and actually doing this funny thing called "listening to the concerns of Nurses" should be a manatory thing is ALL facilities!!!

Very true!

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No. Think about how dangerous that would be for the patients. People that truly didn't care about them would be the ones taking care of them. I wouldn't put it past someone to harm a patient on purpose just to get out of doing the job.

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