So, I still hear the term "nursing shortage" here and elsewhere.
I would love to hear from people about whether there is a nursing shortage in their region and where that region is.
In my area of North Texas we have no nursing shortage that I can see.
What is your experience?
I laugh when I see the term "nursing shortage" I usually tend to think it is BS except for a few places like Nebraska and the Texas border that are less desirable. I feel it is used to manipulate people and funding.
Specializes in ED, Telemetry,Hospice, ICU, Supervisor.
No nursing shortage on the west coast where I live. We have plenty of state schools and for profit schools cranking them out like a buy-one-get-one deal.
There is an experience shortage, but not nursing bodies.
That's the situation in my area -- plenty of nursing bodies, but we need people with experience who can provide leadership and/or provide highly specialized, sophisticated care.
We also need people who will commit to staying more than1-2 years. It's not worth the 6 months of training it takes to educate a new nurse to competence if they don't stay at least 2-3 years.
We also need people who will commit to staying more than1-2 years. It's not worth the 6 months of training it takes to educate a new nurse to competence if they don't stay at least 2-3 years.
Sadly, I think the abundance of nurses in over-saturated markets has perpetuated this phenomenon. So many people are moving to get their "1-2 years of experience" only to up and leave to go back home the minute they are able to find something. I can only imagine how this is affecting the hospitals that are seeing a lot of these new grads, and it would only serve to make it that much less enticing for them to take on new grads and put in the resources required to get them up to snuff.
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
I don't know if I would call it a shortage per se, but I do know that my hospital is hiring quite a few new nurses (myself included), and the unit I am hired on to work at is short quite a few nurses and has to rely on float pool to fill the gaps. A bunch of new grad nurses from my cohort have been able to secure jobs already as well at various facilities in the area. I live in Oklahoma City area.
I graduated from a nursing program in Oklahoma City.
There's no true nursing shortage in the city due to all the nursing programs in and around the metro area (Univ. of Oklahoma, OCU, OSU, OCCC, Rose State, Southern Nazarene, OBU, UCO, Platt, etc) that crank out new grads.
However, there's a shortage of nurses in the area who would willingly work for a starting wage of $19 to $20 per hour, which is what all the hospitals in OKC seem to pay. So the nurses, teachers, social workers and others who were born and educated in Oklahoma head south to Texas and west to the West Coast where they can earn more money for the services they render.
There actually is a nursing shortage, we think there's not because we're using the wrong terminology.
A nursing shortage would be defined by whether or not we employ a sufficient number of nurses to provide proper nursing care. I'd argue that we clearly don't employ enough nurses to provide care of sufficient quality. The forecasts of nursing shortages looks at the staffing standards at that time, predicts how many patients will require certain levels of care, then calculates how many nurses will be needed to fill those staffing standards. For the most part, the forecasts were dead on, what changed were the staffing standards. The step down patients of 15-20 years ago are now on medical floors with double the ratios, and the medical floor patients of 20 years ago are now at SNF's.
What we're typically referring to when we say there is no nursing shortage is actually the nursing vacancy rate, which is a way of measuring demand for jobs regardless of how many nurses patients might need.
Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.
Well Muno, it would be a service if you could get that information out in an understandable way to lay people............
And, I completely agree with what most have stated here and I think it is a huge disservice to all the nursing students paying huge bucks to all the schools out there to mislead them about the future job and pay opportunities whatever the motivation is.
I started this thread hoping everyone would make my point or refute it if it was not true.
No shortage in Charlotte, NC area. We have over 20 nursing schools graduation at least once a year. I am a new grad and we have two hospital systems to choose from that only hire new grads thru the new grad program which is highly competitive especially since they give preference to the graduates from the schools affiliated with the hospitals.
Sadly, I think the abundance of nurses in over-saturated markets has perpetuated this phenomenon. So many people are moving to get their "1-2 years of experience" only to up and leave to go back home the minute they are able to find something. I can only imagine how this is affecting the hospitals that are seeing a lot of these new grads, and it would only serve to make it that much less enticing for them to take on new grads and put in the resources required to get them up to snuff.
That is exactly what has happened at my hospital. We've been burned a lot by people who have no intention of staying. It makes us leery about hiring anyone who doesn't have solid roots in our community and who hasn't demonstrated a solid committment to our hospital in particular through volunteer work, previous employment, etc.
Ginger's Mom, MSN, RN
3,181 Posts
Northeast there is no nursing shortage.