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I HAVE 1 QUESTION : IS THERE REALLY A SHORTAGE OF NURSING EVERYWHERE????
Yes there are. The baby boomer generation is expected to retire soon.
We are still expected to be in a glut of nurses for the next 10 years regardless of this. Many baby boomers have no retirement and I've even heard some conjecturing that they will work until the day they die, if need be. You can't force them into retirement, so I don't think this "retirement" shortage will be all the big.
Yes there are. The baby boomer generation is expected to retire soon.
And that expectation, in my opinion, will not take place. Baby boomers who had a retirement nest egg saw much of it depleted with the market crash. Retirement was put on hold for many or in some cases, scratched completely.
My spouse and I are both Boomers, finding ourselves helping elderly parents while raising a young adult with significant special needs. My retirement is likely to come at the time of my death, which I hope will not be anytime soon.
I actually plan to work another 20 years before considering retirement so for anyone staking out my current job, it's not going to be open anytime soon! 😉
When I went to the ER for my son a couple weeks ago there was a 6 hour wait because there was only 1 doctor. The nurses were overwhelmed as well. I don't know how many nurses there were but I know there weren't enough.
There's a big difference between a nursing shortage and employers choosing not to employ more nurses.
There's a big difference between a nursing shortage and employers choosing not to employ more nurses.
No, they try. No one WANTS to work here. There's sign on bonus at the hospital if agree to work there for 3 years. And I see ads for agency nurses for the hospital & prisons in town. Trust me, it's a shortage.
They can't keep anyone at the prison. So yeah, there is a nursing shortage here.
Well there's only one hospital in town & there is a college that puts out LVNs & RNs. So there should be no reason for a shortage. But honestly, the hospital tries to hire but no one wants to work in this town.
Well I doubt anyone would rush to nursing school so they can qualify to work in a crappy town at a crappy facility (paraphrasing).
A shortage is a deficit of qualified licensed professionals. There isn't a shortage of nurses, there's a shortage of nurses willing to work in poor conditions in a small town, even a sign on bonus is not sufficient incentive. A shortage would be in the 1980's when there were not sufficient licensed nurses to staff facilities and as such the government made provisions such as the H1C visa to import qualified nursing personnel to fulfill the needs.
TheCommuter, BSN, RN
102 Articles; 27,612 Posts
78 million Baby Boomers are in the US. The 26 million (a.k.a. one-third) of Boomers who cannot retire due to lack of money are a force to be reckoned with.