Health Care is perhaps the largest and fastest growing sector of the workforce. It will continue to be, especially with arrival of the "baby boomers" into our aging population requiring even more services and thereby intensifying the shortages.
On March 6, 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the healthcare sector of the American economy is continuing to grow, despite steep job losses in nearly all major industries. Hospitals, long-term care facilities, and other ambulatory care services added 27,000 new jobs in February 2009 (while 681,000 jobs were eliminated nationwide).
Nurses, (specifically, registered nurses) are the largest single profession within this sector. According to a report released by the Health Resources and Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the number of states with a shortage of RNs is expected to grow from 30 states in 2000 to 44 states in 2020. The list of career titles shown below gives a good idea of the scope of the profession and leads us to get a feel for why we have a problem.
Nursing Career Profiles
Critical-care nurse
Emergency nurse
Hospice/palliative care nurses
Labor & delivery staff nurse
Neonatal nurse
Nephrology nurse
Nurse anesthetist
Nurse educator
Nurse executive
Nurse practitioner
Oncology nurse
Orthopaedic nurse
Perioperative(o.R.) nurse
Psychiatric-mental health nurse
School nurse
Staff nurse
Women's health nurse practitioner
As we look at this list, it becomes apparent that there is a good deal of educational and licensing requirements which go into these jobs. However, not only have many schools been faced with budgetary reductions, but individual applicants are faced with financial needs that often preclude their ability to forego a necessary salary while waiting to complete their schooling. The Nursing Reinvestment Act of 2002 has tried to help by introducing new scholarship and loan repayment assistance as well as programs to increase public service announcements and recruitment, but there are many additional issues which need to be solved.
Just some of the additional issues that have created a "diminishing" pipeline are related to low job satisfaction such as poor working conditions (mostly safety & required overtime related), lower relative wage scales and earnings as compared to other job opportunities available, and so forth. Then, other factors are related to the aging of the existing nursing workforce, restrictions in recruitment of non-traditional sources such as other countries, minorities and other under-represented groups.
As you can see, the ability to deal with the projected shortages will take a multi-faceted effort directed at not only the "recruitment" of nurses, but their "retention".
(expert=Bernie_Zelinka)
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