Is there a "Nurse Shortage" Lie?

[New_Man_Nurse]

Is there a nursing shortage lie? Does this keep the colleges full of students?

Defined: a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture.

After becoming a AS-RN, I was told Hospitals would no longer be hiring AS-RNs, the obvious option was to get that BSN. After getting the BSN the hospitals said, there are many people, many fine candidates with 4.0 GPA's, you were not selected. Landing a job in Home Health se.0emed like at least some way to continue to serve. Hospitals were saying that 5 years in Home Health didn't amount to 1 year of acute care, and he couldn't be hired on a med/surg floor. Ok then, a terminal degree would fulfill that life time goal of being educated, what should one do? Change professional from the "worlds most trusted profession, to some other profession?

Not really, a 4.0 GPA and a great understanding of the profession, it won't hurt to grab that Master's before I'm too old. So the Master's, my home health company and those friends had no time for a case manager that didn't work Mondays thru Sundays, so a break again from home health to become a top educated RN. What an honor right. Maybe not. 350 applications later and not one interview, or call, nothing but fake headhunters with "behavioral questions", is this ageism, a flooded market?

Master's done! 4.0, Suma Cun Laude, time to get that med surg outta the way, no more education needed. Advanced Practice wouldn't really be nursing, its is being a provider. Whats next? Another 300 applications, same answer, we found someone that was a better candidate for all 300 jobs? Then a headhunter for a major hospital told me. "I don't know why that a new RN can't be hired, that 1 year experience policy is stupid", no one can work without 1 year acute experience, and no one can be hired without it"? I simply can't place you in any position, sorry.

So, FNP? DNP? Folks if there was really a shortage of nurses I would be working everywhere. The truth is the hospitals are playing the traveler game. Several excuses are being used for refusing to hire nurses with adequate wages, and benefits. "We want to make sure you are a good fit". "We want to make sure after you are orientated, you aren't going to leave"! These excuses are just the ranting of the monopoly that is the health care system I guess.

See: Council of Economic Advisors Brief. (2016, October). Labor Market Monopsony: Trends, consequences, and policy responses. Retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20161025_monopsony_labor_mrkt_cea.pdf

Shouldn't our colleges be informing students, and potential students about how this lie of shortages is not related to, or how it doesn't translate into substantial employment? This isn's a shortage its a "At-Will" employment fraud. IT forces nurses into signing a "At-Will" contract, instead of promoting a "good cause" employment contract. The nature of employment is contractual, signing an at-will contract destroys the definition of Federal Labor Laws, and is a fraud on nurses.

There is no shortage, only greed and deception. (Mostly greed). We are nurses, and at every practice level we do the job, we get it done, we put everyone else first, in the traditions of Flo, and Rogers, Watson, and Lewin. We are agents of change, satisfying customers, providing quality care within legal scope, cost effectively saving the bottom line, without lowering the safety and standard of evidence based practice, we are art, we are caring, we are the ethic, the bottom line, those that stand up when our patients cannot.

Are we jokes? I say we are and every new person that finds this calling should know the immoral and unethical lie you will be told. Is there another explanation? So you want to be a nurse? Do you?

[llg, PhD, RN]

As others have said, it is regional. It also varies by specialty and experience-level. There is not a shortage of new grads with no experience in most areas. So it is hard for new grads to get good jobs in lots of places. But there is a shortage of new grads in places not near nursing schools. There are also shortages of experienced nurses in specialties -- positions that are much harder to fill.

In short, it is complicated. It is not the simple "shortage = lots of jobs for everyone, everywhere" situation.

[JKL33]

The nursing shortage is like the one constant in the entirety of the nursing profession; I would imagine most of the 4-5+ million licensed nurses in this country have been told about it in print or in person.

Whether or not it is a lie is up for debate, and I know we (self included) have certainly debated it. This time around I'll say it this way:

What continues to make this particular claim appear mostly like a lie to me, is the expected solution most frequently associated with the claim: We need more nurses all across the country. More/easier/faster ways for people to become nurses.

The nursing shortage has coexisted right along with several major wrong-headed trends in employment practices - - but those very practices would never get off the ground in a setting where there existed any actual paucity of people qualified to do our work. To me, that seems like a basic, commonsense fact of the beggars-can't-be-choosers variety; I find it the strongest evidence that there is something fishy about the constant claims of shortage. Corporations simply don't get to keep their non-negotiable contracts and their black-listing privileges while claiming to be desperate for help. They don't get to tell people that part of the job is to sometimes provide service for pennies on the dollar instead of the full wage that was agreed upon. They don't get to shove the consequences of all of their calculated-risk-taking policies off onto individuals. I could go on, but suffice it to say that they can either wield power with impunity, or they can claim that business is plagued by a nursing shortage. Not both. The long-standing employer-nurse power imbalance does not support a claim of the type of nursing shortage that is usually being implied.

It is much, much more likely, given that there are literally millions of licensed nurses in the country, that some larger corporations who employ nurses simply can't hire and retain nurses in the manner they wish they could according to their idea of Business Utopia. Calling for more and more people who have managed to obtain a nursing license furthers a business agenda, but very probably in a way that is harmful to millions of nurses and even more patients.

[cleback]

I'm sorry. It sounds like you got a lot of bad advice over the years with pursuing a MSN for a bedside job and not working while in school.

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

As others have said, it is regional. It also varies by specialty and experience-level. There is not a shortage of new grads with no experience in most areas. So it is hard for new grads to get good jobs in lots of places. But there is a shortage of new grads in places not near nursing schools. There are also shortages of experienced nurses in specialties -- positions that are much harder to fill.

In short, it is complicated. It is not the simple "shortage = lots of jobs for everyone, everywhere" situation.

If facilities refuse to hire new grads with no experience, where do they expect to find experienced nurses?

[Daisy Joyce]

It's partly regional.

But facilities deliberately keep themselves short staffed to save on money.

[Luchador, CNA, EMT-B]

As I nursing student I'm gripped by posts like this. Folks that graduated from my school last year with an associates are working med-surg in local hospitals. One girl even got into pediatrics right off the bat.

This is Colorado. As other people said, region seems to make all the difference.

[Possum_RN]

I graduated last May. Everyone from my class (as far as I know) has a job. I had the luxury of waiting and vacationing right after school, so I didn't actually start job-hunting until a little less than a month ago. I interviewed at a few places that offered to hire me on the spot! I just accepted a job in the field I want, with not a 5-minute commute from where I live.

The hospital where I worked as a CNA gave a $4/hr bonus to CNA's in a nursing program, just as a gesture of goodwill to remember once you got your license, I suppose. They also offered to pay for your ADN, if you signed a contract to work for them for a year afterwards. An ADN can get hired at the hospital easily, with the proviso that you will obtain your BSN within 3 years of hire. I think they help pay for that too, but I'm not positive. This is not uncommon for the hospitals in my area.

I should point out that I live in the rural South, in an area that used to be tobacco central, then manufacturing until that went overseas, and is now mired in opioid addiction. The two closest universities are about an hour away, so the community collages and online programs supply the nurses....so, the sad metrics are that there is no shortage of aging, unwell patients with a dearth of nurses.

The current plan is to get a few years experience under my belt (and my BSN online) before moving to a more desirable area.

[Hoosier_RN, MSN]

I would say it's not a lie- but rather the shortage is regional. If you are in Southern California- there is a surplus and many, many new graduates move away to get experience in acute care. If you are in Indianapolis (my area), new grads with ADNs are snatched up upon graduation by all of the major hospital systems. Rural America is begging for nurses as well.

More and more jobs are moving outside the hospital as well, so the competition for hospital jobs is more robust in surplus areas, exacerbating the new grad problem.

But in my neck of the woods in Indiana (south of Indy) there is no shortage, multiple schools pump them out, they go to Indy or Louisville for work. There are tons of jobs posted for PDN or home care that pay so little, working at McDs is a step up. I always hear "you're a nurse, so in demand, you can go anywhere". I say it just depends. People think I'm joking...

[JKL33]

The hospital where I worked as a CNA gave a $4/hr bonus to CNA's in a nursing program, just as a gesture of goodwill to remember once you got your license, I suppose. They also offered to pay for your ADN, if you signed a contract to work for them for a year afterwards. An ADN can get hired at the hospital easily, with the proviso that you will obtain your BSN within 3 years of hire. I think they help pay for that too, but I'm not positive. This is not uncommon for the hospitals in my area.

So here is a scenario of regional shortage with at least some of the attendant hiring/incentivizing behaviors one would expect to see. This is no "HR might contact you at some point in the future" and no "promise to work for us for two years on a unit of our choice in return for being hired into our extra-special training program that we're very proud of" - these are much more tangible/verifiable offers. One year's work in exchange for a degree that enables one to obtain a position with a very significant increase in pay is actually something.

Zombie, I hope this works out well for you. It might seem like the circumstances (population, regional difficulties) are not ideal, but remember, they aren't anywhere. In the situation you describe, a smart/savvy person can develop a decent financial foundation which affects so much of life it's practically invaluable. Choosing to work where your work is valued will put you ahead in more ways than one.

[llg, PhD, RN]

If facilities refuse to hire new grads with no experience, where do they expect to find experienced nurses?

Travel nurse agencies ... nurses who have gotten experience in other, related areas, etc. Just because a specialty unit needs nurses doesn't mean they can afford to spend their scarce resources on an unlimited number of new grads who will 2-3 years to become competent. So, they hire a few new grads and look to recruit experienced nurses and/or hire travelers. Even travelers can be cheaper than hiring new grads who are unlikely to stay long enough to be financially worth it.

[llg, PhD, RN]

The current plan is to get a few years experience under my belt (and my BSN online) before moving to a more desirable area.

And once you get that experience and a BSN, there will probably be a lot of hospitals very happy to hire you. That sounds like a great plan. I wish you a long, happy career.

See my previous post (post #21 in this thread).

[Possum_RN]

Zombie, I hope this works out well for you. It might seem like the circumstances (population, regional difficulties) are not ideal, but remember, they aren't anywhere. In the situation you describe, a smart/savvy person can develop a decent financial foundation which affects so much of life it's practically invaluable. Choosing to work where your work is valued will put you ahead in more ways than one.

Absolutely! My desire to move in a few years stems from the fact that my parents are aging, and I'd like to move closer to them, not because I really want to leave. Working somewhere that is actually motivated to retain you is truly empowering, and makes any not-ideal circumstances much more bearable. I needed that reminder to appreciate what I have/ where I am!

I did get job offers from a few places I applied in the more urban centers, but only at a dollar or so more than the offers I got in my own rural area, where cost of living is much lower. To me, this indicates that while there is a nursing shortage all over the South, the larger urban areas were not as motivated to hire and retain me as a new grad....after all, they have more community collages and a University or three nearby to churn out more malleable new grads!

To anyone struggling to find a job, if relocating or commuting is at all feasible, moving to a more rural area (particularly one further away from any universities) might be a good career move. Take the time you might spend applying to the 300+ closest jobs (I cant imagine filling out that many online resume forms!), and research cost of living and employment opportunities in some of the blank parts on the map. And to the OP: I think this doubly applies to anyone with higher degrees: without universities down the road to supply those credentials, the local job boards are BURSTING with offers for positions that prefer those with their Masters.