No Nursing Shortage At The Present Time

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Just this last Sunday the paper here in DFW talked about the "alarming nursing shortage". Just makes you shake your head.

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

We no longer make this claim at our College of Nursing. In fact, we tell our students that there is no nursing shortage in North Carolina at this present time. Gluts of nurses/ shortages of nurses are cyclical. However, a nursing shortage of catastrophic proportions looms due to demographic changes in the population and nursing workforce. It will happen suddenly, once the Boomer nurses finally decide to retire en masse and all the aging Boomers converge like a swarm of locusts on the healthcare system with their increased need for services (whether acute or long-term care).

[billyboblewis]

Anyone who has lost their job knows that there is no shortage. However with many dark spots on my record I have always succeeded in getting a job after a month or so because I did not give up and have often run into people who remembered me from the past and knew that I could get the job done. In other words until I actually had a job I kept applying and going for interviews. Every person in the world is going to clik with one person or another..you just have to stay positive.

I am assured that some of you are reading this and saying to yourselves, "Duh! This topic is old hat. We already know there's a glut of nurses in many parts of the country, so why are you writing about this?"

Here is my reason for writing about the current surplus of nurses in local employment markets. I entered the term 'nursing shortage' into a popular search engine and yielded nearly 720,000 results. Afterward, I searched for the phrase 'no nursing shortage' using the same search engine and received about 59,000 results. Since the loud warnings of a dire nursing shortage are being hollered everywhere, I am going to do my part and shout some information that contradicts these claims.

Hospitals began experiencing a shortage of nurses in 1998, according to the American Hospital Association in 2002 (Ostrow, 2012). Colleges and universities aggressively responded to this shortage by expanding their existing nursing programs and/or starting new schools of nursing. Johnson & Johnson started an ad campaign to entice more people into the profession. Healthcare facilities responded to the shortage by offering more perks such as tuition reimbursement and scholarships to current employees.

Well, those efforts to increase the total number of nurses in the US have been wildly successful. The number of full-time nurses grew by about 386,000 from 2005 to 2010 and about a third of the growth occurred as unemployment rose to a high of 10 percent during that period, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Ostrow, 2012). But still, the study raises an intriguing question: How did the nation go from a shortage to, if not a surplus, then at least an apparently adequate supply of nurses? (Rovner, 2011).

The federal government helped by increasing the funding for nursing programs to a whopping $240 million, up from $80 million in 2001. The proliferation of accelerated bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) degree programs and direct-entry master of science in nursing (MSN) degree programs also contributed to the rapid increase in the number of new nurses because students who hold non-nursing degrees can complete these training programs in 12 to 18 months.

The slumping economic situation in the US also contributed to the easing of the nursing shortage. Seasoned nurses are not retiring because many saw their retirement funds dwindle during the economic crisis of 2008. Other nurses have become breadwinners and accepted full-time positions once their spouses were laid off during the Great Recession. Some nurses are coming out of retirement and reactivating their nursing licenses. Moreover, masses of people lost health insurance benefits after becoming unemployed, which leads to reduced patient census in places that provide nursing care.

Thirty-six percent of nursing graduates in the class of 2011 had not secured positions as registered nurses (RNs) as of last fall, according to a survey conducted by the National Student Nurses' Association in September (Griswold, 2012). Of course, some states are afflicted with a worse glut of nurses than others. More than four out of ten (43 percent) of California nurses, who were newly licensed as registered nurses in the previous 18 months, say they could not find a job, according to a recent survey paid for by the California Institute for Nursing & Health Care (CVBT, 2012).

Experts predict that a nursing shortage will peak in the US in 2020. While these projections may turn out to be accurate, keep in mind that this country is continually producing record numbers of new nurses each year. Still, the nursing shortage of the late 1990s appears to have eased.

[jamie.glaze]

Just this last Sunday the paper here in DFW talked about the "alarming nursing shortage". Just makes you shake your head.

I read that too - and laughed....

[netglow, ASN, RN]

I have talked with physicians who were in disbelief when I told them literally thousands of nurses are unemployed, and that the colleges contribute twice a year to that number so it continues to grow at a very rapid pace. Every last one of the MDs I have spoken at length about this has looked at me and said, "That's impossible, there is a well documented nursing shortage". So, I have spent time educating them, but don't know if they retained any of it (LOL).

[Ivanna_Nurse, BSN, RN]

I can see why there is not a surplus of travel nursing jobs at this time... makes sense! Ivanna

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

I can see why there is not a surplus of travel nursing jobs at this time... makes sense! Ivanna

The entire UNC Healthcare System has totally eliminated the need for travel nursing jobs within its many satellite hospitals and clinics. It only uses nurses who are already employed within the system, as regular or PRN staff. And this has significantly reduced their labor costs.

[mommyof3girls]

This is depressing news as I prepare to enter nursing school.

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

Back in '93 we had a surplus. Due I believe to the Bill and Hillary proposal for a new health care bill. Patients stopped being admitted and we had on Easter Sunday that year 3 (THREE) patients on a 30 bed floor. We were taking days without pay just to keep our jobs and wait it out.

It turned out the plan failed, and census picked back up. In '99 when I left, we again heard a "shortage."

[chuckster, ADN, BSN, RN, EMT-B]

Thirty-six percent of nursing graduates in the class of 2011 had not secured positions as registered nurses (RNs) as of last fall, according to a survey conducted by the National Student Nurses' Association in September (Griswold, 2012). Of course, some states are afflicted with a worse glut of nurses than others. More than four out of ten (43 percent) of California nurses, who were newly licensed as registered nurses in the previous 18 months, say they could not find a job, according to a recent survey paid for by the California Institute for Nursing & Health Care (CVBT, 2012).

So what is the ultimate fate of those 36% (or 43% in CA) of RN's who have been unable to find nursing jobs for a year or more? Conventional nursing wisdom says that new nurses have a "golden year" after graduation in which to find jobs or risk being unemployable as RN's. Could it be that more than one-third (or apparently more than 40% in some areas) of nursing students are essentially out of luck in terms of their career choice? If so, given that the actual cost to train a new RN generally significantly exceeds the tuition and fees paid by the student, we are are squandering a huge amount of money. That however pales in comparison to the staggering waste of human potential such a scenario represents.

What will these "non-practicing" RN's do in the long run if a career in nursing is no longer open to them? Can it truly be the case with such large - and growing - numbers of trained but unemployed RN's out there, that there is truly a nursing shortage looming? Are we as a country willing to accept a "lost generation" of unemployable nurses?

[Patti_RN]

When a person enters nursing school and graduates at the 'wrong time' (when the cycle reaches saturation and there are few nursing jobs for the number of applicants) those who can't find jobs are in a terrible situation: their skills decay, newer grads with fresher skills are employed and the graduate with no experience and a 2 year-old license becomes less and less employable.

There are ways to avoid this situation, and to overcome it if it's happened to you.

First, if you're considering a job in nursing, read Commuter's advice again... and again. I can hear you saying, "But, it's my DREAM job!" Not to be cynical, but unless you've worked the job, you have no idea if it is--or isn't--your 'dream job'. Read some of the posts from employed nurses who graduated a few months ago or a year or two ago. Many are happy, but from the sounds of it, many more are stressed, overburdened, and scared to death of making a mistake leading to a health crisis in a patient, or leading to them being fired or losing their license.

If you're in nursing school, make every clinical rotation an opportunity to job seek. Go in early or stay late and talk to the unit director or staff about vacancies. Be the best nursing student you can be--be helpful and anxious to help the nurses; ask to assist or observe. Don't hide out in the break room writing care plans--you'll never win points that way. Be visible and be competent.

If you're a new grad without a job, put as much effort into finding a job as you did passing the NCLEX or getting through nursing school. Make it your priority. Don't blindly send out 100 resumes via email every day (you might as well be blindfolded, spun around three times and told to throw a touchdown pass). Tailor your resume and cover letter to each specific job (easily done with even primitive word processing programs) and apply to each job as if it WERE your dream job, and that you're qualified for this particular job! Network, talk to other grads, your nursing school director and instructors. Find out what jobs are available and get introductions. Many jobs are not posted--they are found 'word of mouth'.

If it's been a year or more since you graduated and still haven't found a job, do something drastic. Hire an employment coach, have your resume reviewed and edited by an expert. Physically go to employers with hard-copy resumes in hand; politely ask for 5 minutes of a manager's time. (You'll be refused 9 out of 10 times, but the one time may pay off.) Take a refresher course (usually through a community college or some hospitals offer them), this makes you competitive with the new crop of graduating nurses, and gives you opportunities to network and meet managers. Find an organization where you can volunteer in health care. Get a job as a nurses' aid. Tell yourself you'll make one, really intense, last-ditch effort to find a job--then focus on that for your predetermined amount of time. If you haven't found that job in three months or a year, consider (gasp!) moving on.

If you're a grad with no experience and no prospects for a job, don't believe that a graduate degree in advanced practice nursing (incurring even more tuition debt) will make you more employable. It may be even less likely you'll find a job--employers will see you never had experience, so would most likely hire someone WITH experience (those programs are specifically designed to build on previous knowledge and experience, so you won't have one of the critical building blocks to be successful).

There are exceptions to my advice, above (or to any advice you may get from other sources). But, by all means be realistic.