Well said and "liked"
One of the overarching issues in nursing is the simple fact that nurses don't want to be bedside nurses anymore, and there is nothing wrong with that. This is the root cause of the impending surplus of APRN providers.
Why is there so much demand (right now) for APRNs? They are cheap compared to doctors. Bottom line. They are only cheap due to reimbursement restrictions outside of primary care- and also in primary care in some states.
If public and private payers reimbursed for NP care the same as doctors, then the payroll convenience of having them is nullified. Although, the abbreviated training would still keep supply up, and control wages.
Yes, there is still tremendous APRN opportunity for those who want it. The problem going forward will be that everyone wants it because nursing schools cherry pick students because the field was oversold. It is unreasonable for anyone to expect the best of the best students to settle for staff nursing.
Nursing is in a weird place right now in the US. As a field, there was a huge push for all this education etc. Now that everyone actually got it, institutions are saying, "now what." I think nursing will have to re-evaluate the scope of undergraduate education. It's not good that so many nurses report nursing school to be some sort of helpless drudgery that does little to prepare them for actual practice. And its not good that graduate level nursing education does little to prepare people to hit the ground running- especially in the absence of residency programs.
I think a lot of it comes down to nursing's weakness in expertise. There is no shortcut in becoming an expert at anything. Nursing has tried to dance around this reality in both education, practice, and high level administration. Unfortunately, these issues are beginning to manifest themselves in small ways with labor surpluses.
Nursing has been marketed as a field of convenience and exposed for the pitfalls of that very approach. There is nothing "convenient" about becoming truly competent in the workforce. Until nursing changes this culture, the glass ceiling, clinical and otherwise, will remain.
