What happened to the shortage you ask?

Student4_life · Mar 11, 2011

Hello again AN. I have been on this forum for a year and a half and have heard alot of belly aching about getting into school, and then getting a job after graduation. I have been doing research for a few weeks now on the nursing shortage, and wanted to let you all in on some early findings of mine.

This capacity data is from California. However,I have been looking at how many students took the NCLEX over the last 10 years and this data shows approximately the same growth nation-wide. I only included the end points for ease, but I assure you that year over year this tracks, including CA increasing capacity over 100% in recent years.

Spaces Available: (2001)6,719 (2010)12,797========> Increase of 90% in 10 years

New Student Enrollments: (2001)6,422 (2010)14,228=> Increase of 122% in 10 years (its nice that CA is meeting the edu demand...)

% Spaces Filled: (2001) 95.6% (2010) 111.2%

National

1st time NCLEX takers 2001 69271

1st time NCLEX takes 2010 143702====> Increase of 107% in 10 years

This is incrediable growth (no wonder there is a shortage of nursing instructors, we doubled capacity in only 10 years, I wish my portfolio had the same growth...), and although I can only imagine how competitive it would be to get into nursing school if the current capacity was halved (it already is pretty fierce out there), I can how much longer the job market can continue to absorb new grads (some areas seem pretty saturated, and have already established a preferance for the BSN prepped Nurse).

All I am trying to show with this data is that the competition doesn't end with the acceptance letters I hope you all (myself included) open in the next few weeks. I know I was guilty of seeing the goal as getting into Nursing school, but now I can see that getting in is just the first step.