Questions and Myths Regarding Your Nursing Career

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

Brian Short, Founder and CEO of allnurses.com

Whether you are a nursing student or a new grad, you probably have many questions surrounding your future as a nurse. Let's look at a few of the more common questions and myths that keep coming up.

Why do I keep reading about a nursing shortage when I know nurses are having trouble finding jobs?

There has been talk of a nursing shortage for years, but it hasn't fully kicked in - yet. That's partly because many baby boomer nurses - group that comprises the largest segment of the nursing population - have delayed their retirement for a variety of reasons. As they continue to age and shift out of the workforce, the nursing shortage will become more apparent.

Baby boomers in general make up 25 percent of the U.S. population, and as they grow older and develop health problems they will have a huge impact on the nursing field. Another factor is the impact of the Affordable Care Act. With an ever-increasing influx of people now receiving medical insurance benefits and entering the healthcare system - many of them with multiple chronic conditions - the need for nurses will only increase.

Even without these considerations, some new grads are having difficulty finding jobs. As in any profession, the best thing you can do is to make sure that your resume and cover letter is as strong as possible to set you apart from other candidates. You should also prepare thoroughly for interviews to make the best impression. You can find many resources online for this type of information, as well as online nursing discussion sites that offer many helpful tips on the nursing job-search process.

The best nursing jobs are in the hospital at the bedside.

While hospitals are still the largest employers of nurses, there are many nursing jobs and specialties where nurses practice away from the bedside and outside the walls of the hospital. This is one of the most attractive aspects of the nursing profession, because there is such a wide variety of nursing positions and settings in which to practice. Also, a nurse is free to have many jobs during a nursing career, shifting from one area of specialty to another, which can be done with or without advanced nursing education. Search the Internet for a list and description of the many nursing specialties available. Go to nursing discussion sites and network with nurses in specialties in which you have an interest. With proper research you can find a specialty that matches your interests. In nursing, the possibilities are endless.

Nurses are just doctors' helpers.

While it is true that nurses assist doctors while caring for patients, nurses are far more than "doctors' helpers." Take the registered nurse in the hospital setting, for example. The doctors write the orders and the nurses carry them out. However, it is up to the nurse to assess and even question orders that he or she does not feel appropriate, and to initiate an order that he or she feels is necessary. It is the nurse who provides knowledgeable and compassionate care for the patient 24/7, constantly checking the needs of patient and evaluating the effectiveness of the treatments provided. Many lives have been saved because of the watchful eyes and quick actions of nurses. As the patient advocate, care provider, patient educator and much more, the nurse is an integral part of any medical team, and the heart of healthcare.

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BRIAN SHORT, Founder and CEO allnurses.com

Brian Short is a Registered Nurse, self-taught website designer, entrepreneur, and passionate online community developer. In 1996, when the internet was in its infancy, Brian started what would later become allnurses.com, the largest online nursing community on the web. He was far ahead of his time in recognizing the internet as a virtual meeting place where nurses can share and connect with others.

While attending nursing school, Brian was amazed with the internet but found it difficult to locate nursing related information online. As a hobby, Brian decided to begin organizing the professional nursing content he found so other nurses could benefit from his work. That hobby turned into a passion and shortly after graduating from nursing school he created the precursor to allnurses.com - a text-based discussion forum and e-newsletter. Two years after that, he left full-time nursing to concentrate more energy on the site with the mission of providing a forum to improve members' lives and careers through sharing and learning. Today, allnurses.com has more than 850,000 active members who contribute more than 300 new topics daily.

Brian currently lives outside of Minneapolis with his wife, Karen, and three children.

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allnurses.com and Brian Short in the media...

Questions and Myths Regarding Your Nursing Career

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

As a 52 year old boomer (which I don't really consider myself as they are really another generation for us tail-enders) there is no way I can retire for another 13 years at least. So, don't count on my job

[Victoria-renee]

Was helpful

[Tomascz, ASN, RN]

Thanks for the discussion Brian. As a 'boomer' ('52) looking to re-train my way into worthwhile work toward the end of my productive lifespan (I expect to be making a paycheck until I'm 75, barring any rotten surprises which nurses see every day on the floor) I'm not sure how productive the focus on projected attrition as a primary factor in job availability can be. It is a factor, but it's not stable considering the number of variables like the volatile downward trending job market and shaky economy. I won't even get into the factors (and actors) creating the unstable economic environment both inside and outside healthcare.

The fact remains, the demand for competent, functional, well trained health care workers is not going to do anything but grow.

My focus has been on what I can utilize from my past work and educational experience to build a portfolio that is as broadly applicable as I can make it in a short amount of time that's reasonably well sync'ed with whatever opportunities are available in the field.

I think there are plenty of new grad RN's, new working RN's and RN students in my same (old) boat. I've run across a lot of them in my last 3 yrs of school and clinical exposure. Intelligent, able, motivated and older workers from other fields re-training their way into Nursing is a real thing. No, we're not going to have 30 year nursing careers, but we're going to change the complexion and tenor of the field in hard to predict, and I hope, extremely positive ways.

The bottle-neck may just be nursing schools. Medical art and practice is changing fast on all fronts, for all kinds of reasons, be they ethical, technical, economic, practical or what have you. The whole field of nursing is evolving fast, in parallel. We need schools and instructors that are lean, mean, relevant, progressive and above all, effective. We need students that are smart and adaptable and reasonably well adjusted. It's a huge squirming organic mess of "if's", but I think nurses are up to the challenge if anybody is.

Some of you "old bats" that love this field and this work might consider the possibility that it can be really emotionally rewarding to launch new nurses into the future, even if there's a pay cut involved (and I know you're not getting rich right now). There are lots of openings. It could be the most effective thing you ever do for improved patient care.

[sallyrnrrt, ADN, RN]

i shudder at the burden on home health, assisted living, and LTCs......as the wave of us babyboomers hits the market......i am not sure we are ready for the on slaught :)

[Tomascz, ASN, RN]

Here are HRSA's projected need for nurses for the next 10 years for both LPN/LVN's and RNs (not including APRN's, etc.) broken down by region and state.

HRSA cautions that all bets are off if any of their assumptions change of course, but hey, they did their due dilligence; now it's your turn.

http://bhw.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/supplydemand/nursing/workforceprojections/nursingprojections.pdf

[Tomascz, ASN, RN]

Here's the motherload for you data junkies

National Center for Health Workforce Analysis

County by county breakdown

[humbl]

lol the baby boomers are not going to retire for a looooong time. My dad is a boomer and he plans to work until he drops dead. We can't count on having their jobs in 10-25 years from now when we need jobs *now*.

[Tomascz, ASN, RN]

I've got six months left of school. I'll be taking the NCLEX in June. My expectation is that I will have to take whatever I can get where ever I can find it.

One of my favorite fantasy exercises is getting on Google Maps, scouting out some corner of the country where I think I might like to live, looking the real estate over on Zillow, and finding whatever hospitals are within a 30 minute drive and looking their human resource listings over just to see "what if".

I've been kind of surprised at the number of jobs available where ever I look. There are always at least a couple. Lots of times they're only available to RN's with a couple years of Med Surg under their belts but there's lots of other places that are willing to try me for those couple years.

For me, school is just the beginning. The real learning happens when I get "out there".

I like this adventure, and over time (not too long) the more "arrows" I get in my quiver, the closer I get to that dream job.

It's an attitude thing.

[Graduatenurse14]

Thanks Tomascz!

I used to be in Workforce Development funded by the Feds (U. S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration) and some State dollars instructing adults in GED and Workplace Skills classes in Welfare-to-Work programs. Loved all the data and even used O*NET Online in one of my classes to assist my clients to make decisions on what fields to go into.

The link below is for all types of Nursing. Scroll down to Wages and Employment Trends and you can search by ZIP Code to get a fairly good idea of trends in that area.

Quick Search

[trinitymaster]

Nurses will have to move to where the shortages actually exist. In my area of the country we have an overabundance of nurses. The hospitals have succeeded in making sure that the supply of nurses outstrips the demand. Wages have remained stagnate and benefits have decreased. Soon, nurses will begin to top out at a much lower wage than they currently do. Older nurses, such as myself, are going to have to make way for a new generation of nurse that is straddled with expensive nursing school debt and willing to take any job that they can get.

We should also expect a huge bump in the number of APRN's due to new nurses not being able to handle the rigors of the floor. Nursing schools desperately need to become more competitive and the for-profits should be scaled back. By 2025, the only way to advance in the hospital will be with an MBA. As for me, I have at least 20 more years to work. You are welcome to have my job when I step down.

[MarkWright]

I guess I am a baby boom nurse. Hold off taking my job just yet... I am not done with it.