nursing shortage

Teshiee · May 9, 2002

Lowering the grade expectations is not going to help. Nursing school seems to set the tone of eating thy young. If they are going to make school so damn hard why not be supportive and help those nurses succeed out in the REAL world of nursing. I can't tell you how many nurses I come across with the same attitude nursing school is hell! The instructor is this or that. It is bad all the way round. So unrealistic then when you come out you are plum mad because you realize it wasn't that serious to begin with. Learning with out intimidation would have been nice.

LasVegasRN · May 9, 2002

I can't speak about the nursing school issue, I had a positive experience. Maybe too good of an experience because it sure didn't prepare me for the witches I encountered in the real nursing world. Yes, it prepared us for dealing with emotionally labile physicians (being nice here) but in no way did it prepare us from all the backbiting, bytching, and cruelty that other nurses inflict on other nurses. :crying2:

It's an unfortunate but sad truth.

Regarding the shortage, I think most of us can agree that the shortage is in bedside hospital/facility-based care. I think I would work 3 jobs, stock cans at Petsmart and play with the animals before I'd go back to hospital based nursing. :stone

RNforLongTime · May 9, 2002

I once attended a Nursing School--Hospital run diploma program. If you failed and by failed I mean less than an 80% in any of the Nursing classes then you were dismissed from the program after some counseling from the director. They would let you re-take the failed class over one time and then if you failed it again(less than 80%) you were dismissed from the program for good! This was the BEST nursing program in the area at the time, it has since closed and the graduates put out by the school had the best clinical skills. When I started back in Aug. of 1990 there was a 2 year waiting list. Only reason I got in was because they took so many students directly out of high school(I was one of these) and so many directly from the community, so many back to school moms, etc.

I was two trimesters away from graduation back in March of 1992 when I failed one of the Nursing 300 level classes--I got a 79.25 rather than an 80% and was kicked out of the program. They told me that I could get back in but would most likely have to wait for at least a year. I was devastated! So, instead, I enrolled in a four year college-state institution as I couldn't afford the private Catholic university. Five years later, on May 11, 1997, I graduated with my Bachelor's degree, the proudest moment of my life! My desire to be a nurse was greater than the powers that be's desire to weed out undesirable students! I succeeded! And I think that I am a pretty darn good nurse!

micro, RN · May 10, 2002

lowerin the grade standards is not the answer.......a nursing student has to be able to critically think and make the grade........

but possibly some antiquated ideas in nursing school and advanced theory to practice could be an enlightenment.........

but this is I am sure not the general, but just in some programs.........

I am an old nurse.......and after being a student again.......I want to teach in this arena...........

Sjackson983 · May 17, 2002

I work in a 15 bed CIC and 6 bed CSU combined unit. We are supposed to have 9 nurses each noc. We have 5 core staff and 2 new regular staff. That's it folks. The rest are travellers. We have a couple of really good travellers, but some are the pits. I'm not sure when hospital administrators are going to get it. They all talk about the nursing shortage and how bad it is all over. Bottom line is money. We can c/o short staffing all we want and profess all we care about is the patient. If we were paid what we deserve to get paid, there would be no nursing shortage or not as bad a shortage. I live in Nevada. Our state has one of the worst nurse-patient ratios.

fedupnurse · May 17, 2002

Nursing schools in my area are making it more difficult for students to enter. This is both positive and negative. I graduated 10 years ago with a handful of people who had never set foot in a hospital. They didn't last too long in bedside care! But I also know an EMT who worked as a PCA on my unit who was told she had to take a CNA course before she would be admittied into the program. HELLO!!! She works in a hospital and has logged thousands of hours dealing with ill and injured people in the community and she is being made to jump thru hoops? Just stupid!! Also the busy work in nursing school can be replaced with time learning pertinent facts. Why force students to spend hours looking up rationales for care plans we never use?!?!?!?! It is just dumb. Diploma school nurses are far more clinically competent than ADN or BSN graduates becasue they spend more time in clinical. That is what the focus should be. Not an hour for pre conference and another hour for post conference with 3 hours on the floor!

Hospitals need to wake up and smell the coffee. They think nothing of having an overwhelming amount of managers and administrators but say they can't afford to advertise, can't afford to retain the nurses already there. It is such crap! The only worthwhile hospital administrators I ahve ever met have never lasted more than a few years at my facility. They tried to do what was right-God forbid!!!!

When we are treated with respect and paid what people who have others' lives in their hands should be paid and get retirement benefits we can actually live off of in old age, then you will see less of a shortage!

teamrn · May 25, 2002

No shortage? I don't mean to sound catty, but where have all heads been of every one who feels we don't have a shortage. :confused: Recruitment is down, retention is a problem, working conditions are far from magical, and job satisfaction is far from a huge plus in many arenas. I've said this before, but I'll say it again; if nurses are NOT part of the solution, they will be seen by health care consumers in the future as part of the problem, and I don't think the future of nursing wants to deal with such negatives:o

I feel that the care and compassion that most nurses have for their fellow man and for health care can be rekindled if we realize that there is a problem, study it, brainstorm, and THEN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS to solving it

MQ Edna · May 25, 2002

Yes, there is a nursing shortage, and yes, there is indeed a faculty shortage as well. I did academia for two different schools of nursing right after I got my MSN in Acute Care of the Adult with an Education minor. I also stayed at the bedside and "kept my hands dirty". I loved teaching nursing students and I'll even brag a little; I was darned good at it. But at age 43, I was the SECOND YOUNGEST FACULTY at my last school. And after a year of gritting my teeth through embarrassingly low salaries, knowing that the grads I was turning out would pass my wages within 6 months, knowing that I was forcing my family to live on substantially less than I'd made as a full-time ICU nurse, I bowed out and accepted a CNS position. This still wasn't what I could make at the bedside, especially with the ICU nurse shortage, but I really love my job, and I could make it what I wanted it to be, which meant I could still be out there "in the trenches".

The moral of this story: if you want to get instructors who have actually been at the bedside recently, are capable of functioning there now and have a realistic grasp of what nursing is, you have to PAY THEM ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM WANT TO DO IT! I never dreamed that I'd busted my gut and put my family through hell to get a Masters with dreams of giving back to the profession I loved only to have to take a $10,000 a year pay cut to use the degree I worked so hard for.

Sorry...The sermon is over. :rolleyes :mad

gypsigirl · May 25, 2002

JeannieM, I agree with you....you should be paid much more as a teacher. I am a student and I truly admire my teachers and their dedication. Some students were really suprised when they found out they would most likely make more than their teachers when they graduate....a sad comentary. BTW, what part of texas are you from?

CseMgr1, ASN, RN · May 25, 2002

I took several courses towards my B.S.N. during the 80's and 90's...only to be told later that none of the nursing courses I took at the Diploma School of Nursing which I graduated from would be accepted into a nursing program within the University System of Georgia...because it was a not a four-year accredited program prior to 1989. To make a long-story short, I would have to start ALL over again!

Thanks, but no thanks. They can't take away my experience OR my license. I'll just stick to working on my CCM certification, instead.

mercykitten · May 25, 2002

I worked one semester as a "part-time" instructor, supposedly only to work 20 hrs a week. But my boss expected 40 hrs a week out of me. I was only getting paid $500/month and was still working part-time at the hospital. I was living at home with my

Dad (after mom's death), so didn't have all the living expenses. But that changed when Dad got remarried. I had to quit at the college and go back to the hospital to make ends meet. So, yes, nursing educators needs more money as well as nurses at the bedside.

Peeps Mcarthur · May 25, 2002

Nursing's recognotion will come through the refinement of its curicculum. As others have stated, clinical expertise for which a nurse is measured by is gained in the clinics not the classrooms. Nursing curicculum is lagging behind nursing's need for recognition of skill level and pay scale adjustments because of its dependance on psychology vs. physiology and tangible clinical facts. Open a textbook of psychology sometime and witness its ineptitude at making a valid point in the development of what a skilled clinical nurse does on a day to day basis. The "science" of psychology carries weight in the definition of a skilled nursing student but does very little to promote the same interest in the clinical setting.

There's no time in REAL nursing to ponder such complicated,inconsistent and variable theories when you don't even have time to pee! How ineffectual then is that curicculum?

Nursing's recognition and prestige is too slow in coming to attract many of todays top students. Those students see the curicculum as being a little too touchy-feely and then so do the media and administators that hold thier opinnions up to the general public where nursing's image is formed.

Pscychosocial therory is retarding the advancement of nursing in the technical world of the hospital floor. When the public's image of a bunch of birkenstock-wearing tree huggers that care more about a patients feelings affecting an illness than the tangible pathophysiology is done away with, nursing can be seen then as the scientific career that it is.