Why do people insist that there is a nursing shortage?

SlyFoxRN, BSN, RN · Mar 23, 2012

My city has 3 BSN nursing programs and 1 ADN program. It's not even that large of a city, and yet all of the nurses I talk to say there is a huge shortage and many of the floors and that nurses are constantly asked to do overtime (esp. in the ER). It's weird, cause everywhere else I hear of nothing but shortages.

allnurses Guide · Mar 24, 2012

Finally the changing job climate is trickling out to the public at large, but for the most part people will look at you like you've got three heads when you say it. If they move from thinking you've lost touch with reality to merely being skeptical you should think of it as +1. :) I find classified ads and online job postings to be very misleading - although I don't get why they continue to pay for them. :confused:

Seas · Mar 24, 2012

Because there is nursing shortage in some areas, and the world is not allnurses.com.

If many can't land jobs on this website, the rest of them in real life can.

mazy · Mar 24, 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.

A lot of those jobs are not actually jobs that are hiring. Most of those positions are for facilities that are going to hire internally, they're just putting the notice out there for external applicants even though they have no intention of hiring.

Additionally those are postings that never come down. If you go back a year from now you will still see the exact same postings.

And for each of those postings those facilities receive hundreds and hundreds of applications from nurses across the country. Most of which will never make it into the HR database.

So those career websites are not an accurate indicator of what's out there in the job market.

allnurses Guide · Mar 25, 2012

Because there is nursing shortage in some areas, and the world is not allnurses.com.
If many can't land jobs on this website, the rest of them in real life can.

Exactly. People always talk about "the unemployment rate", and yet they never point out that the rate in Detroit is probably not the same as it is in Salt Lake City or Newark. I'm glad there's an allnurses for people to network, share tips and share their frustrations when sites dedicated to landing jobs like Monster.com, Indeed, and Careerbuilder don't pan out.

brillohead, ADN, RN · Mar 25, 2012

A lot of those jobs are not actually jobs that are hiring. Most of those positions are for facilities that are going to hire internally, they're just putting the notice out there for external applicants even though they have no intention of hiring.

But if they hire internally, doesn't that then open up a position where the internal person came from? If a Med-Surg nurse takes an ICU position, don't they then need to hire another Med-Surg nurse?

And for each of those postings those facilities receive hundreds and hundreds of applications from nurses across the country. Most of which will never make it into the HR database.

Obviously they won't be hiring every person who applies. That doesn't negate the fact that there really are jobs out there.

So those career websites are not an accurate indicator of what's out there in the job market.

That's also only *one* site out of hundreds available. My local hospitals don't even advertise on sites like that, and their listing in the newspaper's classifieds consists of nothing more than their facility name and "see openings at ". I just looked at one of those and saw over a dozen full-time RN jobs, plus a nurse-anesthetist and an LPN. Not a single listing on a career website and only the name/website in the local classifieds, but a dozen open RN jobs. Relying on career websites and newspaper ads is not enough.

Editorial Team / Admin · Mar 25, 2012

But if they hire internally, doesn't that then open up a position where the internal person came from? If a Med-Surg nurse takes an ICU position, don't they then need to hire another Med-Surg nurse?

Not necessarily. They just expect those remaining to do more with less. Case in point: we recently lost three nurses for various reasons. We had to fight to get permission to open one of those three positions to be filled. We'll be losing a surg tech shortly to nursing school graduation and an RN position outside the OR. I highly doubt they'll let us replace her, leaving us actually worse off than we are now because we still have to get the one nurse we were allowed to hire through orientation (minimum 12 weeks). So we'll essentially be working four positions short for several weeks.