Nursing shortage: A myth?

Nurses General Nursing

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Hi everyone!

When I graduated form RN program, I thought that no matter where I moved, I would find a great job. So far, I had no problem finding a position I wanted. I got multiple offers being 6 mos pregnant, I also was a new grad. Unfortunately, I have to move in the nearest future due to poor air quality and multiutude of health problems it has caused my family. When I satrted reading threads from other states and Northern CA, I found myself to be very dissapointed- everywhere I looked, new grads and RNs with experience wrote about diffuculties they encountered when looking for a job. Is nursing shortage really a myth?

Please write what your experience has been and what you think about nursing shortage or the absence of it.

Thank you!

Perhaps the MYTH that you are referring to is not the one you actually understand as you are a newbie. If you look at the numbers of people holding nursing licenses in this country, there is not a nursing shortage. Because healthcare is so mad, the majority of licensed nurses have left/are leaving nursing jobs and going into non-nursing careers. They do not give up their license - after all it is a lot of work to get - but they will no longer work in healthcare. Thus, the nursing shortage (in areas not saturated with nursing schools and/or foreign nurses).

I think this is the most concise and accurate post I've ever read on allnurses- with the exception of my own posts.;)

There are plenty of job openings for nurses, but there is no shortage -- there are more than enough licensed US RNs to fill every open position in the US today. There is no shortage of nurses, there is just a shortage of nurses willing to put up with crappy, dangerous working conditions. Experienced nurses are "voting with their feet," and many new graduates quickly burn out and also leave the field (how many threads are there just on this board about new grads who are getting fed up/burned out and leaving nursing after a year or so?)

Oddly enough (or perhaps it's not odd at all :uhoh21:), discussions about what to do about the "shortage" always revolve around how to get more people through nursing school, not what kinds of changes in working conditions would be necessary to keep experienced nurses at the bedside. Until changes are made in the typical hospital working conditions for nurses, we're just bailing a leaky boat without having first fixed the leak ... However, those kind of changes would involve hospitals spending money, whereas most efforts to increase the number of students graduating each year typically involve spending public money -- guess which proposals hospitals want to talk about???

Additionally, the "problem" with increasing the number of students in existing nursing program (or starting new nursing programs) isn't simply the difficulty recruiting qualified faculty, although that is always a challenge. There is also more and more difficulty finding clinical sites (particularly the specialty areas -- peds, OB, psych, etc.) for students. There are SOOOOOO many nursing programs now that competition for available clinical sites is fierce in many areas. Until I resigned last Spring, I taught in a state university BSN program in an urban area that had a large number of nursing programs in the area -- a few BSN programs, several community college programs, and a few hospital-based diploma programs. I taught a specialty, and arranging the clinical experiences each year was a nightmare. There were only a few possible sites in the area, and every school wanted (needed) to use those same sites. Some of our students and instructors had to drive an hour each way to clinical, and we (the faculty, not the students!! :lol2:) were grateful to have that opportunity.

IMHO, the answer is not simply to keep ratcheting up the number of "slots" in nursing programs, but to make changes that will make nursing jobs more attractive to the people who are already educated and licensed, and keep them working in the field.

You are so right, sister!

For years, I have been comparing the situation to a bleeding pt-

If your pt is hemorrhaging, do you just transfuse, transfuse, tranfuse? Or do you try to find the source and causes of the bleeding and stop the hemorrhage?

Because it's easier and cheaper for health-care corproations, our nation has decided to address the so-called "shortage" with the transfusion only approach.

Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

As other posters have pointed out, there are many facets to the nursing shortage issue -- or the multiple issues that are collectively called the "nursing shortage." Anyone who thinks it is a simple , single issue is mistaken.

For example, those who think there is no shortage (and cite the number of people with licenses as evidence that there is no shortage) are being overly simplistic and failing to look at those numbers in detail. Many of the RN's not currently practicing as nurses are at or near retirment age and would not come back to bedisde nursing even if there were dramatic improvements in working conditions. Others have stopped practicing for other reasons that would not change regardless of the working conditions, but maintain their licenses "just in case" of emergency or out of a sense of pride at having earned it. Also, the age of the average RN is rising, causing legitimate concern for what may happen as those folks reach retirement age -- again, something that has nothing to do with working conditions.

However, those people make a valid point about working conditions. SOME of the shortage is due to the fact that hospitals have failed to keep up with societal expectations regarding working conditions, thus making many RN jobs unattractive. If those jobs were made more attractive, they would have less trouble filling them. That is PART of the picture, but not the whole story.

Another PART of the story is the disparity beteen the salaries of faculty members and those who work in practice environments. That makes it difficult for nurses with advanced education to choose faculty jobs unless their family has another secure and adequate source of income.

Another PART of the story is the fact that as the population ages and technology advances, there is a greater need for health care workers and workers in jobs that are associated with health care (e.g. technology development, etc.) -- which both increases the demand for nurses and also syphons off some of the people who might have become nurses in previous generations. Those people now work in technology fields and/or allied health fields or some other similar type job.

Another aspect of the story is that with more career opportunities available for women than in the past, fewer women find a job where they will have to work with body fluids, people who smell bad, pssoible exposure to disease-causing bugs and chemicals, etc. attractive. Throw in the necessity of staffing a patient care unit on a 24/7 basis -- and the job becomes less appealing to a society that simply doesn't want to make the sacrifices and take the risks that previous generations expected to make. And with other good career options available ... people are choosing those other options.

etc. etc. etc.

In other words, it's complicated ... and anyone who says it isn't complicated is not seeing the whole picture. It's a combination of a lot of factors -- and those factors vary from place to place and time to time. If it were simple, it would have been solved by now.

Specializes in Rehabilitation; LTC; Med-Surg.
I just don't understand though, can someone help me understand this. How is it that it's hard to get into nursing school and yet there's a shortage?

The problem is finding a nurse with his/her Master's degree that will agree to teach in an RN program at $50,000/yr compared to the $70,000-$80,000/yr they could make in a hospital.

I personally believe that there is no nursing shortage.

Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

I wish people who are responding would add the state in which they are looking for jobs. I can tell you in Massachusetts, the new grad market is glutted to say the least! After graduating, I applied to every hospital in the region and only got one response, and that was only because I was an internal applicant! I was one of the lucky ones. At the community hospital where I work, there were recently over 1,000 new graduate nurses applying for 7 new grad positions. People I have graduated with two years ago have still not landed jobs. My husband is now graduating and it is almost a guarantee that we will have to move out of state to start his career. Please, someone tell me where the jobs are at. Because they are NOT in the Northeast.

Specializes in Psychiatry.

go to http://usajobs.gov/

There you can find jobs with the Veterans Affairs hospital (where I work and love it) or as a civilian with the military.

I worked at the VA hospital in MI then transferred to UT :)

One bonus of working for the VA is because you can transfer to any VA in the US (Alaska and Hawaii included)

recession did it all. all fixed. now a myth. poor new grads.

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