Nursing Shortage ? Why are classes so limited and/or small ?

EricJRN, MSN, RN · Jan 10, 2010

In many areas, there are limited resources in nursing programs and that's one of the big factors that actually contributes to the nursing shortage. It can be difficult to entice nurses to become instructors when there are other paths of advancement that offer better compensation.

In some areas of the country, there isn't a nursing shortage at all. In other areas, the shortage is actually just a shortage of experienced nurses, with new grads having difficulty finding a position at all.

I think it just depends on where you're referring to.

elkpark · Jan 10, 2010

In the first place, the "shortage" is largely bunk.

There aren't limits on how many people can write the NCLEX, but schools are limited in how many students they can accept. Nursing education isn't like most college classes, where it doesn't really matter whether the professor is lecturing 20 students or 100 students, and, if there's more demand for a particular course, you just add another section to the schedule. Nursing school involves supervised clinical experience, and the state BONs set limits on how many students each instructor can supervise in clinical settings. Students wouldn't get a very good education if they had clinical groups of 30 or 50 students with one instructor. Also, the hospitals and other facilities that provide the clinical settings can't handle very large groups of students at a time.

Also, there is are a limited number of nursing faculty members available because these positions require advanced degrees, but, ironically, typically pay poorly compared to clinical nursing practice. I've been in and out of nursing education for years, and have yet to meet a teaching colleague who couldn't be making more $$$ working in a clinical setting instead of teaching. It's v. common that your graduating students will start out making more $$$ as new graduate RNs in the hospital than you make teaching them, with advanced degrees and certification.

There has been a big push in recent years to expand the number of available "slots" in nursing schools in the US -- most schools have expanded the number of students they can accept, and many new schools have been opened. There has been a lot of variation in the quality of these programs and the education they provide, as you can see if you look around this forum and read about the experiences some people have had with their nursing schools. IMHO, choosing to go for "quantity rather than quality" in nursing education is a big mistake.