Between mandatory overtime and critical nursing shortages,
Why are schools denying entrance to perfectly good candidates?
Why are waiting lists so long and so few slots available in the programs?
And more importantly, how come the states that keep making mandatory over time state law, not focusing on the schools that are causing this problem to begin with. Isn't that the foundation of the problem?
I respect, and am HAPPY that it's so difficult to get into school. That leaves the ranks open to only the best. But I've seen women that have been trying for 5 years to get into ADN programs at community colleges, rejected again and again with perfect 4.0 averages.
IT's really disheartening, and at some point, these kinds of policies become ridiculous. I'm sure there's got to be something I'm missing here..
While a shortage of qualified nurses willing to teach in SONs is certainly a big problem, it's not as simple as just that -- there is also the matter of clinical sites. I last taught in a state university BSN program in an area which included two BSN programs (ours and a private university), two diploma schools, and several community college ADN programs. Med-surg clinicals were not really a problem, there were plenty of sites/units available, but the competition for specialty clinical rotations (peds, OB, psych, critical care) was fierce. I taught a specialty, and arranging the clinical rotations every semester was a nightmare, with all the schools attempting to get their students scheduled into the same few sites. This is the case anywhere there's more than one or two nursing programs in an area, and, nowadays, that's nearly anywhere in the country.
In order to expand nursing programs, schools need to not only have sufficient faculty to accommodate the larger number of students, but also sufficient clinical sites, and that's getting harder and harder to do -- especially when more and more hospitals are merging into "healthcare systems" and consolidating/closing many specialty units; there are fewer and fewer sites available at the same time that everyone wants nursing schools to expand.
I think it's very short-sighted of the larger community to focus so much on the "need" to expand nursing programs and crank out larger and larger numbers of new grads every year without addressing the issues within nursing that are driving so many experienced nurses away from the bedside and out of nursing. There are more than enough licensed nurses in the US to meet all our current needs -- it's just that hundreds of thousands of them are not currently working as nurses. Until we address and ameliorate the problems that are driving so many nurses, new grads and "old hands" alike, to leave the field, we're just bailing a leaky boat without fixing the leak.
bingo! but as long as they get enough new grads to stay a little while, then the next bunch comes....and they can keep "snowing" them ....till the next bunch comes.....and they get paid less then the older experienced nurse....etc, etc
it is a bit ridiculous when one thinks about it. You hear again and again about this nursing shortage, America will be short xxxx nurses in 2020 etc... At times I am start to think the nursing shortage is about as real as the Bigfoot myth. Yea a lot of people claim Big Foot exists, they have photos, foot prints etc... but no one is really sure, science has yet to prove conclusively that Big Foot exists. So then my question then is, is there really a nursing shortage or is this something cooked up by the universities?
Alright so then one applies to a nursing program and you find out "A" school got 500 applicants and only 15 are being accepted. Your back up "B" school got 400 applicants but are only accepting 20. And again and again, school after school you find the same thing. How the heck are we solving the nursing shortage if we are only accepting 10-20 students per year? Meanwhile telling the other 450 applicants or whatever, "Sorry try again next year"
There is no doubt that people want to be nurses, it is certainly not a lack of enthusiasm based on the student's part. But still accepting only 10-20 per year, I don't know, I just don't know.
morte, LPN, LVN
7,015 Posts
bingo! but as long as they get enough new grads to stay a little while, then the next bunch comes....and they can keep "snowing" them ....till the next bunch comes.....and they get paid less then the older experienced nurse....etc, etc