This Is Why There’s A Nursing Shortage
Wondering why there’s a catastrophic (I’m exaggerating…mostly) nursing shortage in the U.S.? My personal theory: intelligent, caring women finally got fed up with running the hospitals and taking, literally, all kinds of crap from doctors and patients, and decided to go to med school and get the respect and the paychecks they deserve.
Or, there’s the theory that a lot of today’s nurses are Baby Boomers, who will be retiring any minute now. And then they will go down hill physically. Right along with their ginormously-numbered cohort. (Seriously, I thought everyone died in WWII; where did all those damn babies come from?)
Anyway, a bunch of nurses are set to retire and will then get old and require medical attention. Not so great for nurse numbers. Along with that, nursing programs around the country were already not set up for educating all the necessary replacements, budget cuts are slimming down existing nursing programs, and—don’t even get me started—medical facilities are feeling recession-driven budget cuts and are laying nurses off. I shake my head at administrators everywhere.
Here’s the must succinct list of facts, reasons, and information I have found:
American Association of Colleges of Nursing: Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet
Read it, and try to stay healthy until we can learn up the new kids (I direct this toward my parents and their Boomer generation).
Related Posts:
Forward Progress: Solving the Nursing Shortage
How Nurses Think
Global Nursing Shortage
Better Nurse-To-Patient Ratios Save Lives
Posted by Alexa Harrington
Its like you read my mind. I’m almost getting fed up taking all sort of hits at my work place. I’m LPN right now and I’m trying to go to school for my RN bridge course. The government has to do something about this issue before things get out of control.