The Nursing Shortage Facts

Based upon what is known concerning the trend in the number of Registered Nurses and the anticipated future demand, the shortage of nurses is expected to increase slowly until 2010, to an anticipated point of 12 percent. Then demand will start to exceed supply until 2015 when the shortage, which was a mere 6 percent in 2000, will almost quadruple to 20 percent.

You'll understand these statistics better after reading this brief report.

This grave report about the shrinking supply of qualified nurses, “Projected Supply, Demand, and Shortages of Registered Nurses: 2000-2020,” shows what a serious crisis American health care will be in by 2015 due to the shortage of nurses. Already we are experiencing a shortage of good nurses. Health care costs are out of control and prescription drugs are incredibly expensive. Necessary surgeries are often put off and patients are sometimes not getting critical care on time.

There are many reasons for the shortage of nurses. One is the draw of young women with science aptitude into other possible career choices. Many decades ago these women were encouraged into nursing. Now they are encouraged to become doctors, scientists, researchers, etc. Some of these choices, while more demanding academically, are less stressful than bedside health care. Even a job in pharmacy sales is less stressful than nursing.

The supply and demand for nurses is often cyclical, and often there is a shortage or surplus of nurses at any given time. But the current and approaching shortage isn’t like the shortages of the past. When the current regiments of RNs age and retire, their replacements will be much fewer than in years past. Because the shortage could impact nursing care for many years, the solution to the shortage should also be long term. If not, the shortage will hardly finish before the cycle begins again. We will have no time to replenish the lost resources.

Other factors in the nurse shortage are: the aging of the US population. There will be more patients requiring more care; the shift in health care focus away from the standard physician’s office and toward the nurse practitioner; fewer students in the nursing schools; changing environment in working conditions; the poor image of nurses by both patients and doctors.

To combat these problems, nursing schools will have to reexamine and retool their recruitment procedures and possible double their activity. Efforts to retain nurses once they have graduated and are working will be vitally important, and will include improving the status and salaries of nurses. Promoting the profession inside and outside the healthcare environment will go a long way toward improving the image of nurses. Although the shortage won’t be reversed quickly, and we may experience some of the dire predictions mentioned above, it isn’t too late to begin rectifying some of the problems.