Why no nursing jobs and is the profession stable?

Joe N635DC · Aug 7, 2009

I understand your worries, as a student as well I have to worry about the same thing. I did a little research here though. We are living in a time when about 60% of nurses are approaching retirement age due to the baby boomer generation. Though it is true that we are cranking out graduates from nursing programs we can not graduate nurses at the rate that they will be retiring in the very near future. To that end we can say that, yes, there is a definite shortage situation that is only going to get worse as time goes on. The reason we cant keep pace with the soon to be retiring nurses is that there are not enough nurse eduactors to support the teaching facilities we have now. This shortage of nurse educators negates the possibility of opening more nursing eduacation facilities. This problem exists because nurse educators are not compensated as well as clinical nurse healthcare providers. This keeps nurses from wanting to leave the clinical setting. Who really wants to take a job for less pay?

Now for a word on the current status of things. In the recession that we are living in, more nurses that were ready to or are approaching retirement age and planned to retire are now holding on to thier jobs for a little bit longer for many different reasons. This could be that thier spouse was laid off or had hours reduced or otherwise.

The effect that this has on new graduates is that there is a reduced need. The shortage does exist today as more and more nurses have patient ratios that are generally too high. In some places the patient ratios may even be borderline unsafe. With all the belt tightning going on, nurses have been charged with accepting even higher patient ratios than ever before, all in an effort to keep a few more dollars in the company coffers.

Many places have had to learn to make do to weather the storm. Making do comes in the form of hiring freezes and in some places even cut back on staff. However many of the cuts being made in hospitals are on non clinical support staff. The additional stress placed on nurses mainly stems from the hiring freezes as opposed to layoffs. As some nurses retire, there is no replacement, hence the higher ratios.

As an added complexity to the whole situation, we have the possibility of a "one payer system" on the horizon. I am not going to start a debate on whether I think it is a good Idea or not, instead I will leave it at this. There are many implications that a major change in the funding of US healthcare will bring and must also be considered.

All that being said however I anticipate that as the world recovers from the current recession and things begin to balance out and the last of the baby boomers retire there will be plenty of jobs to go around for todays and tommorows graduates as the clinical facilities try to raise healthcare quality by reducing patient ratios back down to safer more managable levels.

Sidenote: even if there are plentiful jobs for the new graduates in the coming years the nurse workforce is going to be more challenged than ever depending on your point of view. From a new nurses point of view, over half of the seasoned nurses will have retired leaving unexperienced nurses in thier place that may not be able to handle the ratios of the well experienced nurse. As for a large majority of the more experienced nurses, they will be an overtaxed resource as they will have higher ratios of new nurses seeking to learn from thier years of experience. Surely anyone getting into nursing should not get used to life being like what they see in the hospital today but rather assume that they are walking straight on into a hurricane of challenges. I am one of these people, I am hoping I am wrong about how bad I project things could be. Knowing these things, you would thing I would change my mind and choose a different major but I know what I was meant to do with my life. Difficult or not it's what I want to do, we need nurses and I like to be challenged anyway. as far as challenges are concerned I need to learn to be careful what I wish for as I just might get it.

Dino · Aug 7, 2009

Thanks for the response. As having worked for several years in pharmaceutical sales I have seen alot of unhappy nurses, often asking the reps if our compnay was hiring reps. Unfortunately, due to the crazy complexity of our economic system, I would agree that though nursing jobs may again rebout soon and hospitals will seek new grads etc... from your post it appears that the job itself may only get worse for the nurse. The sad thing is that if salaries don't compensate for this increased demand on nurses, the drop out rate in the profession will remain the same, we'll end up like we are now with plenty of nurses just not enough that will remain in the profession. I wonder if there really is a solution to the problem. On my end at least as a soon to be student, all you hear about is how great nursing is, how much opportunity there is out there, the increased respect, increasing wages, along with how stable the profession will be for new grads. I am starting to think it's alot of hogwash. Also, there are hundreds of nursing programs throughout the country, if there are say 200 programs nationwide,between community college, hospital based, traditional 4 year programs, and accelerated 2nd degree programs, and each graduates say 20 students per year, that's 4000 new grads/year. That would be minimal, as some programs may graduate more than one class per year or have more than 20 students graduating. If there is a shortage, I don't think it will last long at this rate of graduating students, esp. when to your point many nurses will remain longer in the field due to the economy, not having enough to retire etc...The issue for me is that this is a second career, I am not in my 20's anymore, and I don't want to have face lay-offs or being underpaid due to a surlpus of nurses, if that is the scenerio than what benefit is it for anyone in being a nurse??

Yes, the caring and helping people is a great reason but it can only go so far. If the nurse can't make enough or is abused in the environment they are in, or cannot retire due to not having made enough to invest agressively in a 401k, than who will remain in the profession longterm?? It seems the flood of people going into the profession are doing so for three reasons, one they like to help people, two, they hear it is a supposedly in demand and stable profession, and three they hear wages are supposedly increasing. How accurate is that really? Thanks again for any insight.

K98 · Aug 7, 2009

Dino, if you are looking for guarantees, you won't find them. Anywhere. I am a second career RN, finished nursing school at age 45. Most of my co-workers are in their 20s and 30s. I am the oldest nurse on my unit (50), and I don't see many in my age group around the hospital. Most of the staff (1200 RNs) are young, so I'm not seeing any mass retirement on the horizon. That said, the hospital that I work in continues to hire RNs at a good clip, as does the larger health system in Pittsburgh, UPMC. I know there are a lot of concerns regarding employment, mostly from the eastern part of the state. Jobs are still readily available in the Pittsburgh area. I agree that the federal health care plans are a wild card, we'll just have to wait and see.