7.+Not+Enough+Nurses

 NOT ENOUGH NURSES?

Nursing and the related occupations of nursing assistants, medical assistants, and home health aides are among the fastest growing job categories in the United States. Through the recent economic recession, healthcare was the only sector to add new jobs consistently over the past two years. Still, despite this growth, many observers predict that the future will bring a significant nursing shortage because the number of elderly will grow as the large baby boomer generation retires over the next twenty years. Read the attached fact and write an essay describing the causes and consequences of the nursing shortage and how you would attract more people into nursing. A suggested outline follows. PARAGRAPH # 1: INTRODUCTION: DESCRIBING THE NURSING SHORTAGE
 * How big will the nursing shortage be?
 * Why do people think there will be a nursing shortage in the future?
 * Are more or less people entering nursing?

PARAGRAPH # 2: CAUSES OF THE NURSING SHORTAGE PARAGRAPH # 3: CONSEQUENCES OF THE NURSING SHORTAGE PARAGRAPH # 4: POLICIES – WHAT ARE PEOPLE DOING NOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM PARAGRAPH # 5: CONCLUSION (OPINION). IF YOU COULD BE KING / QUEEN FOR THE DAY, HOW WOULD YOU SOLVE THE PROBLEM

[|Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet] [|More Young People Are Becoming Nurses; Trend May Help Ease Future Nursing Shortage in U.S.] [|The Recent Surge in Nurse Employment: Causes and Implications (Health Affairs)] [|A Provocative Conversation with Peter Buerhaus] [|Interview with Peter Buerhaus] [|The Future of Nursing] [|Burned Out Nurses = More Infections] Report on the Nursing Shortage







Debating the shortage; Nursing jobs scarce, but experts say that'll change Author(s): [|Joe Carlson] Source: **//[|Modern Healthcare].//**

It's perhaps the last thing nurse educators want to see in print right now, but here it is: Some analysts say the nursing shortage is being over-sold by educators, and are asking out loud whether it still makes sense to turn out such high numbers of new nurses when so many new registered nurses can't find the hospital jobs they want. That sentiment was exacerbated by recent forecasts of economists, including the American Bankers Association last week, saying that the nation is headed for a long, slow climb back to full employment, which will force the older baby boomer nurses to cling to their jobs and keep new nurses out even longer.

"The number of graduates in the nursing field far exceeds the number of annual graduates that will be needed by 2015, said Joshua Wright, a writer at Moscow, Idaho-based labor analysis firm EMSI. "Our conclusion is that there is a mismatch between supply and demand.

Such statements are heresy to the well-organized community of nurse-educators, who have long been beating the drum to encourage more young people to enter the nursing profession ahead of 2011, when the first of the baby boomers turn 65.

"I would be very leery of any projections like that, said Geraldine Bednash, CEO and executive director of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. "Over history, we have had absolutely no rational ability to predict shortages or surpluses.

It was only four years ago, in April 2006, that the Health Resources and Services Administration released projections that the nation would experience a shortfall of more than 1 million nurses by 2020, driven by the rapid conversion of baby boomers from employees of healthcare to consumers of it.

Peter Buerhaus, the widely cited professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville, said the warnings of an impending shortfall triggered a sudden rise in nurse education and caused most nurseeducation advocates to focus on the shortage of nursing instructors.

Then came the Great Recession. "We found that the recession resulted in an incredible, unprecedented rise in hospital employment of nurses, we estimated by 243,000, Buerhaus said. "More than 100,000 of these nurses were RNs older than 50, many of whom had thought they had retired.

Conventional wisdom has been that the shortage still existed, but was simply masked by the sustained employment of these older nurses, and that the deficit of bedside caregivers would snap back as soon as the economy turned around again.

That's because, in addition to the high average age of hospital nurses, about three-quarters of them are married. The assumption was that older nurses would leave the workforce again once their individual household incomes returned to pre-recessionary levels, especially in cases where a laid-off spouse regained employment. Now economists are projecting it may require half a decade for the economy to return to full employment. The American Bankers Association on June 16 projected that national unemployment, which stood at 9.7% in May, will decrease to only 8.5% by the end of 2011.

"The longer this recession keeps unemployment high, the longer it will keep these older RNs in the workforce, Buerhaus said. "I'm worried the slow jobs recovery will cause those nurses to do everything they can to hold on to those jobs, and it will slow the trend of new nurses coming into the job market.

In the short run experts say that may look like good news for hospitals, who can afford to become more choosy about who they hire. Bednash, of the nursing college association, said the slow growth may even improve the quality of the nursing workforce as a whole, as many nurses return to school to upgrade to bachelor's or graduate-level degrees in order to make themselves more competitive in the job pool.

But that's far different than saying that the tight job market for nurses ought to dissuade students from considering the profession.

"To give the message that we don't need to keep the investment in nursing education would be disastrous. Those are exactly the people we need, and they are the people most easily employed right now, Bednash said. Kathy Kaufman, senior research scientist for policy at the New York-based National League for Nursing, said hospital employers can't afford to disregard nurses' concerns in the workforce just because economic forces have turned nursing into a buyer's market.

"The biggest takeaway needs to be that turnover remains costly, Kaufman said.

"The last thing you want is a workforce that is held hostage by external economic conditions, because those are the people who are least productive, and the first ones to leave as soon as they have the opportunity, she said. She said the recessionary mindset is what may be causing labor strife in the nursing ranks, including this month's walkout of 12,000 nurses in the Twin Cities and similar strikes elsewhere around the country.

"The economic climate does not really obviate the need to make your work environment attractive, she said. "In the long run that really hurts everyone, not just the nursing employer. It affects quality, it affects productivity, and it will generate turnover.

Carlson, Joe. "Debating the shortage; Nursing jobs scarce, but experts say that'll change." //Modern Healthcare// 21 June 2010: 8. //General OneFile//. Web. 9 Dec. 2011.

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