For as long as I can remember, the nursing shortage story has circulated and I've been a nurse for about 35 years. When I first went to nursing school, there was a 2-3 year wait to even get into the nursing classes/clinicals. We had much better staffing back then too. The only shortage I really saw was as staffing got cut. And it remains that way. Short staff has become an economical tool used by many facilities and it sure makes it look like there is a shortage. We had 32 hospitals in a tri-county area back then, and now there are three, with two of them owning all the rest that didn't close, and continuing to build smaller outpatient/office buildings all over the place, while continuing their large main campuses. There is no wait, other than maybe a semester, for nursing classes so clearly not as many are going into them here. But they are full classes. Ohio has some outlying financially strapped areas where there are probably legitimate shortages. But a study was done a few years back and the results were that if every licensed and registered nurse in Ohio went back to work, we would have too many to fill the vacancies. A lot of nurses have burned out from the short staffing and have looked for alternative jobs where that isn't an issue. The worst part of it is that the people who suffer for this are the patients. I don't care how many QA and QI are put into place, without adequate staffing, quality of care will continue to suffer. Thank God I'm a nurse and can oversee/manage the care given to myself and family members who have to be in the hospital or a nursing home. I feel bad for those who don't have that advantage.
