Will there be too many nurses in the near future?

Published

Will there be too many nurses in the near future? I read an article quoting the US Health Resources Services Division that there would be an excess of nurses in some parts of the country in the not too distant future. Kind of makes sense, because in my area alone some of the universities have accelerated programs pumping out new grads like it's going out of style, and some of these programs are high capacity cohorts forming three times a year with a 90 student capacity for each cohort. Not to mention all of the nursing programs in my area. There are too many to count. Read the same thing about nurse practitioners...too many in the near future. Some nurse practitioner programs don't even require applicants to have an RN license to apply, and I've know some nurses who have jumped right into NP school with so little experience as an RN. It's just a bit scary since I'm contemplating going to nursing school. I don't want to spend a ton of money if the market is going to be saturated with nurses scrambling to find jobs. Have nursing degrees become cash cows for universities, so much so that the drive for revenue is setting up the profession for a bleak near future? How is saturation not inevitable?

Specializes in school nurse.
14 hours ago, MunoRN said:

"There are nurses who will claim there is no nursing shortage, but they're idiots."

Aren't you the soul of diplomacy?

2
Up Vote Up Vote ×
18 hours ago, Workitinurfava said:

Many of the nurses I work with hold multiple jobs (meaning less available jobs in the future for all of these nurses being pumped out of schools) and as the previous poster mentioned, we will still work short staffed.

You mean they hold multiple nursing jobs or non-nursing related jobs?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.
18 hours ago, MunoRN said:

It's important not to confuse the nursing job vacancy rate with a nursing shortage. There are nurses who will claim there is no nursing shortage, but they're idiots.

Just because an employer chooses not to hire sufficient nurses to properly care for their patients, that doesn't mean that the number of nurses an employer chooses to hire defines the number of nurses those particular patients need. Employers define the vacancy rate, not the number of additional nurses required to properly care for a patient population.

So in terms of vacancy rate, I'd say we're already into a bit of a nursing glut, in terms of a nursing shortage, we're a few hundred thousand short of what we need.

No need to insult people. It is unnecessary.

I say there is no nursing shortage because where I live there are a billion nursing schools churning out new grads every semester. Even if we followed California's staffing laws there would be nurses left without jobs or underemployed.

Now that might not be the case everywhere, it is the situation in much of the US.

We are not a few hundred thousand short....not by a long shot. We are short-staffed but we are not short of nurses.

2
Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Critical Care.
9 minutes ago, ThePrincessBride said:

No need to insult people. It is unnecessary.

I say there is no nursing shortage because where I live there are a billion nursing schools churning out new grads every semester. Even if we followed California's staffing laws there would be nurses left without jobs or underemployed.

Now that might not be the case everywhere, it is the situation in much of the US.

We are not a few hundred thousand short....not by a long shot. We are short-staffed but we are not short of nurses.

You're referring to a low nursing employment vacancy rate, which is completely different from a nursing shortage. A nursing shortage refers to whether or not there are a sufficient number of nurses working as nurses to meet the nursing needs of the overall patient population. I don't think it's possible to look at nursing homes, hospitals, outpatient disease management, mental health, etc and say there shouldn't be more nurses in these settings.

2
Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med-Surg, NICU.
10 hours ago, MunoRN said:

You're referring to a low nursing employment vacancy rate, which is completely different from a nursing shortage. A nursing shortage refers to whether or not there are a sufficient number of nurses working as nurses to meet the nursing needs of the overall patient population. I don't think it's possible to look at nursing homes, hospitals, outpatient disease management, mental health, etc and say there shouldn't be more nurses in these settings.

There should. Absolutely. I am not saying that. I am saying we have all the nurses to appropriately staff these places. Employers, however, are just not hiring them.

We have the supply. We just aren't using it.

3
Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion