Is there REALLY a nursing shortage?

Nurses General Nursing

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This is an interesting article guys/gals...

Here's the letter I wrote to the President, Vice-President, U.S. Congress Rep. and Senator:

"I'm an R.N. and I recently started working as an agency nurse because the pay is so much better and the hours are very flexible. The hospital system in my area that uses most of the agency nurses is in the process of hiring foreign labor to cut costs and fill positions. I read an article, "Is there REALLY a nursing shortage?" by Richard Armstrong and what he said really concerned me. It is true that American jobs are going overseas and there are over 8 million Americans out of work. People who go to school for certain professions do not have jobs when they graduate. Where is the AMERICAN DREAM going??? I realize our country is a melting pot and all, but what about OUR JOBS for US HERE???!!!

Please abolish the H-1B program. Americans need to demand that employers not be allowed to replace American workers with foreigners... I'm finally not living paycheck to paycheck as a nurse and I'm finally able to get ahead... But now there is this big black cloud looming over my head and it's full of foreign nurses trying to get out of THEIR country to take MY job. :( Why are you letting this happen to your fellow Americans???

Sincerely,

Marie L. Schultz

Shreveport, Louisiana"

I don't know if it will help or not, but I figured it was worth a try. Nurses from India, Africa and Thailand (among others) are coming to the Shreveport area to fill gaps of this so-called nursing shortage so that the hospital system I work at won't have to use agency nurses. Instead of paying American nurses better... this is what is happening. Nice. Very nice.

Do you see this happening where YOU are??? I just started working agency and that's all I'm doing right now. I love it. I just started April 19th, 2004 and here it is... not one month later and 15 foreigners are starting in the next week or so as a "pilot" for the other 3 hospitals of this hospital chain. This hospital chain uses most agency nurses here in Shreveport. They're trying to get rid of agency nurses all together by using these other nurses.

Again I ask: Do you see this happening where YOU are???

Thanks in advance. :o :angryfire

It wasn't about the money for me. It was about too many patients and not enough support for a new grad. I would have happily taken less money per hour (blasphemy around here I know) for saner working conditions. I'll keep looking for a position in nursing that doesn't push me to the depths of depression, but if I don't find it so be it. I will not sacrifice my mental and physical health for the working conditions that so many nurses are subjected to. Life is way too short and there is no amount of money they could pay me that would make me want to do that.

ITA, only it's not just the new grads who don't get enough support, it's the seasoned nurses, as well.

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Specializes in medical-surgical.
I went on the nursing website of one state and they had 126 nurses in ONE MONTH to get their licenses either revoked or suspended.

No wonder the hospitals are short.

BSNtobe2009, YIKES! What state was that? Did they list the reasons why? I am starting to get the impression and that it would be real easy to have your license revoked or suspended due to the crazy conditions that nurses have to work under.

I live in PA, and my license was issued at the end Oct. 06 and since then 870 new licenses have been issued.

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Specializes in Cardiac, ER.
.State and even better, Federal mandated nurse patient ratios may help aleviate this phenomenon, IF the healthcare facilities will be severly punished when they try to circumvent mandated ratios,by some of their devious methods, they seem to be so good at.:devil:

From your mouth to God's ears!!!!!

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Specializes in Critical Care,Recovery, ED.

After reading numerous threads on this topic and suggestions on how to fix the problem I've reached a simple conclusion. RN would stay at the bedside if they were given the appropriate resources to care for their patients and that the number of patients they are required to care for was based on research evidence. To date that would give everyone the much toted 4:1 ratio on med surg. The only places I know that mandate this type of ratio are California and some Australian provinces or by uniojn contract elsewhere. All of these entities anedotically report less to no shortage or at least an increase in number of licensed RNs then before the legal mandate.

Gee does that mean letting nurses truly practise the profession of nursing releive the shortage and lack of adequate staff that so many but not all areas report. I think so.

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if there wasn't a shortage would hospitals be paying for nurses in other countries to uproot and come work here?

As long as the health-care industry is allowed to rely on foreign countries to supply nurses in large numbers, nurses' wages will remain suppressed and working conditions will not improve. Hospitals don't have to make changes when there's someone else willing to do your job for less.

You're probably too young to remember the teacher shortage of the seventies and eighties. When that happened, schools didn't turn to foreign countries to supply teachers. They increased wages dramatically. End of teacher shortage.

Government figures show that we've got 400,000 licensed nurses in this country who've left the profession. Why don't hospitals try to lure them back before turning to the Philippines?

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I live in NJ and find that where there is not a shortage,there are a few specialities that could use help. I used towork med/surg. As aLPN I traveled for a while and came back home. If they would let seasoned nurses back into the hospitals it would ease the load for the RN's. The field does not appreciate LPN's and that makes for a shortage in certain areas.

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Specializes in Looking for a career in NICU.
BSNtobe2009, YIKES! What state was that? Did they list the reasons why? I am starting to get the impression and that it would be real easy to have your license revoked or suspended due to the crazy conditions that nurses have to work under.

I live in PA, and my license was issued at the end Oct. 06 and since then 870 new licenses have been issued.

Virginia....the vast majority of them were controlled substance violations, failure to comply with education for substance abuse (reason ENOUGH for hospitals to do drug testing often and frequently), arrests for other things not reported to the BON. There wasn't alot of procedure....there was one where a nurse was suspended because she refused to do attend to a full CODE patient, but again, I was shocked at the substance abuse cases.

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Specializes in Looking for a career in NICU.
As long as the health-care industry is allowed to rely on foreign countries to supply nurses in large numbers, nurses' wages will remain suppressed and working conditions will not improve. Hospitals don't have to make changes when there's someone else willing to do your job for less.

You're probably too young to remember the teacher shortage of the seventies and eighties. When that happened, schools didn't turn to foreign countries to supply teachers. They increased wages dramatically. End of teacher shortage.

Government figures show that we've got 400,000 licensed nurses in this country who've left the profession. Why don't hospitals try to lure them back before turning to the Philippines?

That depends on what state you live in. North Carolina is a state where there is a critical shortgage of teachers. You don't even have to have a teaching degree to teach high school here anymore....you just have to have a degree in ANYTHING as long as it's a 4-year, and then they pay for you to go back and get your teaching certificate within 5 years.

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Specializes in ED, ICU, PSYCH, PP, CEN.

In triage the other morning I took an axillary temp on a 3.5 y/o who was happily running around laughing, playing games but everytime I tried to touch him he would start yelling and screaming up a storm. Mom says he always get ax temps. He did not feel warm to me at all. Ax temp was 98.2. An hour and a half later the ER director came in to help out 0630 and yelled and screamed at me and the charge because I had done an axillary temp. He made the charge do a rectal and she got 98.8. Found her downstairs in the lounge crying at 0715. And they wonder why there is a nursing shortage.

I said they hired me to use my nursing judgement in triage and I stand by my action.

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It wasn't about the money for me. It was about too many patients and not enough support for a new grad. I would have happily taken less money per hour (blasphemy around here I know) for saner working conditions. I'll keep looking for a position in nursing that doesn't push me to the depths of depression, but if I don't find it so be it. I will not sacrifice my mental and physical health for the working conditions that so many nurses are subjected to. Life is way too short and there is no amount of money they could pay me that would make me want to do that.

:yeahthat:

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Specializes in Neuro ICU, Neuro/Trauma stepdown.
Have you considered that the hospitals/nursing homes want foreign nurses because they will work cheap and wont make waves?

As long as the health-care industry is allowed to rely on foreign countries to supply nurses in large numbers, nurses' wages will remain suppressed and working conditions will not improve. Hospitals don't have to make changes when there's someone else willing to do your job for less.

You're probably too young to remember the teacher shortage of the seventies and eighties. When that happened, schools didn't turn to foreign countries to supply teachers. They increased wages dramatically. End of teacher shortage.

Government figures show that we've got 400,000 licensed nurses in this country who've left the profession. Why don't hospitals try to lure them back before turning to the Philippines?

actually, i had no idea what was going on. this makes a lot of sense, they foreign nurses don't make waves...and i have no idea how much they make, i assumed we all made the same amount.

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

Personally I think it involves horrible work policies, patients/families and wages!

AND the "customer is always right" mentality that hospitals try to pull or patients themselves shoving that in our faces time and time again!

If more patients and families were respectful and decent acting towards nurses, accepting them as professionals and extremely helpful under some of the worse situations...I would be much happier, and most of nurses feel that way too!

I mean, you have to deal with management stuff...but to have it come at you from patients and patient families too when you are only doing your best for them, and struggling to make work tolerable as is...well...any sane person would say "why am I doing this???".

I don't believe in the shortage at all...I do believe in work places and patients that drive nurses out of their minds, and some have to leave to save their sanity and health!

As I always said..."if the customer is always right...why are they here then asking for our help?".

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