Nursing shortages/careers

CEN35 · Dec 31, 2005

Last Sunday or Monday (about 12/24/05') I had the TV on after a football game. It was something like dateline? They did a quick thing about nursing and the shortages and expected outcome.

They claimed that currently the shortage of nurses is about 100,000. Based on the projections by some goverment research, it's expected to hit 700,000 by 2020.

They claimed that nursing schools are all full, and that most have a 1 to 3 year waiting list to get in. They interviewed a guy, who left the aerospace industry (an engineer) after 10 years to become a nurse. He claimed there is no work for him in his prior field.

They then went on to say, most people view nursing as bed bathes and bedpans. Which we all know is not even remotely accurate. they then said, it's much more than that. Then the story was over without elaboration. Again the media leaves out so much info.

They failed to mention, that many of the new grads coming into nursing get back out within 5 years.

While the shortage continues, hospitals send people home when slow, and expect them to come running back when they are busy. At least from what I have seen, it seems everybody is prn in reality. Yet, hospitals talk about recruitment and retention. It seems many have went from the "It's about the patient" to "It's a bussiness".

I think that those people who get into nursing really, don't realize what a money dumping pit a hospital can be? When it's time to make up for that, staffing or hours get cut.

If a floor gets closed down for weeks, due to low census. Those nurses don't get the hours they need. Then when they need them, there not there to come back. This all happens while a hospital talks about retention. Unfortunately, I personally have not met or heard of any independently wealthy nurses, whom do this for fun.

Budget cuts are expected every year (while the cost of inflation and products go up).

Productivity is always expected to be high. However, some non nursing financial whiz has devised a formula that decides how this works. While other hospitals do not even have things like productivity.

A lot needs to be fixed. It would be nice to ahave the media address "the rest of the story"

Have a nice day!!! :spin: