Nurse Shortages Continue To Plague The Health Care Industry
Nurses are in more demand than ever. That’s good news as far as nurses and those still in the nursing programs are concerned. But not so for the hospitals and health care facilities scrambling to hire new qualified nurses of all specialties.
The weak links in the “nursing supply chain” start from a lack of enough nursing programs in colleges and extend all the way up to the high cost of living in some metropolitan areas.
Sometimes the legislators get the blame for not earmarking enough money to support the existing nursing programs and start new ones. And in some other instances, the realities of the job market divert nurses to far away places for better pay and more promising career challenges.
The nurse shortage is acute in Central Texas where an additional 5,000 nurses are needed by 2010, which is only three years away at the time of this writing.
The same is true of California. According to a 2006 study conducted by the California Hospitals Association, there are 622 nurses for every 100,000 Californians, in contrast to the average of 787 nurses per 100,000 Americans. California is ranked 49th out of 50 states by CHA in availability of nurses.
But parts of California fare even worse. In North County, for example, there are only 356 nurses per 100,000 residents.
The situation looks similar in parts of Canada. In a recent news story, the O’Leary Hospital in Prince Edwards Island was reported to “go from 16 beds down to five” for the rest of this summer “unless more nurses can be found.”
Paradoxically enough, sometimes improvements in the overall health care system can actually reduce the demand for nurses. The overall picture is a complex one.
Lorie Shoemaker, chief nursing officer at Palomar Pomerado Health, for example, is quoted for pointing out to a less demand for nurses with the “national shift from traditional health insurance policies to managed care plans focused on keeping people well.” When people feel better and get sick less often, hospitals close and nurses move out to places where they are needed more.
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U. Akinci is the Editor of the monthly “Nurse Recruiter Newsletter” published by http://www.nurse-recruiter.com, the nation’s premiere travel nurse staffing agency.
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Tags: doctors, health, hospitals, medicine, nurse, nursing, patients, RN, shortages, surgery, travel nurse
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