Why do people insist that there is a nursing shortage?

Ciale · Mar 21, 2012

This is how I see it -- The economy is bad which has forced a lot of hospitals to lay off staff and work with a shortage of nurses. Since a lot of nurses across the country were layed off, hospitals are basically cherry-picking when it comes to hiring because there's a bunch of experienced unemployed nurses right now looking for work. New grads are expensive. Expensive to train and not very efficient.

At least, this is what happened in my neck of the woods.

WannaBNursey, ADN, ASN, RN · Mar 21, 2012

If you go on bls.gov, it still says that jobs are expected to increase greatly between 2008 and 2018. Most people consider the word of bls.gov to be law. If you look at a big website like that instead of looking at your local market, you'd get pretty confused!

PghRN30 · Mar 22, 2012

When I ask my friends and teachers I ask them if this is a good idea to be a nurse, they say NURSE, they make so much money and they all say I will always have a job.

Always love that one.....get that from everyone when talk comes about being in nursing school. Its always oh you will make SO much money. Yes nurses make decent money, but anyone I talk to pretty much thinks nurses make a LOT.....as in a LOT more then i really will.....as if it is just easy money.

Granted the always having a job thing is more true then not where I am, as long as I can get a good job out of nursing school and get experience. Am in an area that the market for nursing jobs hasn't gone too bad, even for new grads, even with 3 or 4 (maybe 5?) university nursing programs, a community college with 5 campuses, and 4 diploma schools graduating students just in this county (though many may not stay in area).....and the population is very much on the older end, so that need coming down the pipeline will be impacting here sooner then it may elsewhere.

dragonfly414 · Mar 22, 2012

It is to my understanding that there is a shortage of nursing instructors, not nurses in general. I don't think there is a significant nation wide shortage right now, but there probably will be! The average age of an RN in the U.S. is 47. Here in Maine the average age is 49. Also the fastest growing age population is people 85 and older. Many nurses will be retiring in the next decade and many people will be elderly who are living longer with chronic diseases. Less nurses + more patients = a nursing shortage on the horizon!

cayenne06, MSN, CNM · Mar 22, 2012

Always love that one.....get that from everyone when talk comes about being in nursing school. Its always oh you will make SO much money. Yes nurses make decent money, but anyone I talk to pretty much thinks nurses make a LOT.....as in a LOT more then i really will.....as if it is just easy money.

When I graduated nursing school and was trying to decide which job to take, i found out that my sister thought new grad nurses started at 50 dollars an hour. I WISH!!!!! I was pretty thrilled to find a job making 28!

cayenne06, MSN, CNM · Mar 22, 2012

It is to my understanding that there is a shortage of nursing instructors, not nurses in general. I don't think there is a significant nation wide shortage right now, but there probably will be! The average age of an RN in the U.S. is 47. Here in Maine the average age is 49. Also the fastest growing age population is people 85 and older. Many nurses will be retiring in the next decade and many people will be elderly who are living longer with chronic diseases. Less nurses + more patients = a nursing shortage on the horizon!

I feel like I have been hearing that same story for a reallllllllly long time!

applewhitern, BSN, RN · Mar 22, 2012

Well, Dragonfly, I know quite a few nurses who are in their 70's and still working! (And many in their late 60's.) So many of us were hit hard with the economy. I don't know why people think RN's make soooo much money~ I sure don't! I make a comfortable living, but work my tail off for it. I am on the downside of 50's, heading into my 60's. It is harder to work extra at my age, but I will have to do it till I drop dead! If I had only known, I would have went into something else. I work harder, and have less benefits, than all of my family, and most of my friends. I agree the nursing schools are way too heavy on the advertising. The cost of some of these schools, and the debt the students end up with, seems to outweigh the actual nursing salary.

Wave Watcher · Mar 22, 2012

"mar 21 by crazygoonlpn mar 21 by crazygoonlpn a member since aug '09 - from 'tennessee'. posts: 107 likes: 66

age: 27

awards:

it depends on where you are located in the country. for example, in the nashville area (middle tn) there are several nursing schools continously putting out new graduates. therefore, there is not a nursing shortage in this area and it is not easy to find a nursing job. however, there are other parts of the country where nursing programs are few and far inbetween. in those areas there are not very many new graduates located there or moving there and and there is a nursing shortage in that area.

here's an example: west tn is a rural area and there are very few nursing programs located there. a friend of mine graduated last year with her bsn from the university of tn at martin (located in west tn). after graduation she moved to nashville to find a job. she struggled and eventually settled on a skilled nursing facility (not where she wanted to be). however, all of her fellow graduates stayed in west tn after graduation and were immediatly offered jobs in the local hospitals."

amen to that! i'm from nashville also and you have to fight tooth and nail to get a job. new grads are being spit out left and right and the "old timers" ( i don't mean old, just 20yrs or more experience) are hanging on to their jobs.

FlyingScot, RN · Mar 22, 2012

My position has always been, and it has not changed, that there never was a nursing shortage. Not when you looked at the number of actively licensed nurses in the US. The true shortage was in nurses willing to work at the bedside. When the economy tanked many of those licensed nurses came back to work or switched to higher-paying acute care positions and viola!...no more "nursing shortage".

mazy · Mar 22, 2012

It is to my understanding that there is a shortage of nursing instructors, not nurses in general. I don't think there is a significant nation wide shortage right now, but there probably will be! The average age of an RN in the U.S. is 47. Here in Maine the average age is 49. Also the fastest growing age population is people 85 and older. Many nurses will be retiring in the next decade and many people will be elderly who are living longer with chronic diseases. Less nurses + more patients = a nursing shortage on the horizon!

Unfortunately nurses are now being forced to put off their retirement because they lost their pensions and savings in the recession. The patient population that will be growing will be the elderly. So there will probably be more jobs in geriatrics; however, no one wants to work in geriatrics.

brillohead, ADN, RN · Mar 23, 2012

There are jobs... but they might not be in your town or at a facility you want to work at. You may have to move to a different part of the country. You may have to work in a SNF or LTC instead of a hospital. You may have to work nights/weekends. You may have to work Med-Surg or home health or hospice when your passion is really L&D.

But there are nursing jobs. I just did a quick search on Monster.com. Michigan has 200+ RN jobs listed. Massachusetts has 400+. New York = 848. California = 869. Florida has 1000+. Georgia = 393. Texas has 1000+. New Jersey = 361. Granted, they're not all appropriate positions for new-grads, but there ARE nursing jobs out there to be had.

noahsmama · Mar 23, 2012

When I ask my friends and teachers I ask them if this is a good idea to be a nurse, they say NURSE, they make so much money and they all say I will always have a job.

From this I can tell that none of your friends or teachers are nurses, especially given that you live in Northern California. The job market for nurses, especially new grads, is abysmal here and has been for many years. However, for reasons I don't understand, the stories about nursing in the media still tell everyone that there is a nursing shortage, so when you try to tell people you're having trouble finding a job as a nurse, they look at you like you have two heads.

I actually had one woman I know say to me "you must not want to work then", when I told her I couldn't find a job as a new grad nurse. You see, her niece had gotten a job right away 2 years earlier, and this proved that anyone that really wanted a job in nursing could get one. Never mind that local hospitals that had hired dozens of new grads just the year before (I graduated in 2008, when the economy was just starting to head south) were cancelling their new grad programs left and right. Tried to tell her that but she wouldn't listen because she was so sure she knew better. Actually asked me if I had applied to Kaiser, as though that might not have occurred to me (um, gee, the biggest employer of nurses in my area, No, never occurred to me to apply there! ). Had to walk away so as not to slug her.

There's been a shortage of nursing jobs in the Bay Area long enough now that sometimes people actually believe you when you tell them it's hard to get a job, because they know someone who knows someone who had a hard time finding a job as a nurse. Unfortunately though there's still a lot of people who think they know more than you about nursing jobs even though you're a nurse and they're not!