In the mid-1930s, reports of nurse shortages began surfacing throughout the United States. During the early years of the Great Depression unemployment rates for nurses had increased dramatically. 1933 to the 1960s, was one of the first in a series of nurse shortages. This plagued the United States healthcare system for over the next 5 decades. One of the strategies they thought would work back then was to allow more students to be admitted to nursing school. Another one was to shorten the educational period. You would get more nurses produced but also nurses in a faster manner. During World War 2 the United States needed more nurses. So the government provided a small amount of money to pay for some nurses' educational programs. The 1943 Botton Act created the Cadet Nurse Corps program that lasted until 1948. This act provided 160 million dollars for nurse education funding and financial support for nursing students. This was a lot of money for both students and hospitals. The students that enrolled in this program received free education. The licensed practical nurse movement began in the late 1930s and continued during the 1940s. Back then a lot of nurses believed that being higher up would solve some of their problems.
Statistics show that by 2025 we will be short 500,000 nurses. During 2014-2022 there were 1 million job openings for nurses. We need nurses because of the growth and need for replacements. 70,000 nursing student applications were turned down due to not enough teachers, classroom space to teach in, and or clinical space to train them. The current situation prevents the teachers from training enough nurses to fill the demand. Presently, there are around 500,000 licensed nurses who are not in the nursing workforce. Around 20% of these nurses have been out of the workforce for too long. They would need to be trained before they could go back into the workforce. Around the age of 47, most nurses start to think about when they want to retire. Personally, healthcare organizations should think about using pension plans to attract nurses. The pension plan could work as a magnet to help draw nurses back into the workforce. This period would hold the nurses there until they reached retirement age. This pension plan could also keep the current nurses on the job. Studies show that 66% of starting nurses quit within one year. This pension plan would help make sure they couldn’t quit. Our nurse shortage is supposed to increase in depth over the next 20 years. The United States has a large number of registered nurses that are not working. This problem might be because of too much demand. This demand also requires the nurses to be up to date on all the technology. The United States has 3 million nurses but only 2.6 million are working. The employment rates have decreased by 3% between 2020-2021. That was the largest decline in at least 20 years. If the healthcare organization provided online healthcare degrees and certificates, it would help grow our nurse population. A key factor that has played a role in the nursing shortage would be Covid-19. A lot of nurses didn’t want to get the shots for Covid and they had to quit. A lot of them didn’t want to work through this awful disease. By 2030 California will be the state with the largest nurse shortage of 44,500 nurses. Some effects of this shortage could be errors in the hospitals, higher death rate, higher risk of infection, complications rise, nurses working overtime, and patients getting sent home without being properly checked out. Losing more nurses would cause other nurses to have higher stress levels, overtiredness, and physical exhaustion.
In my opinion, if we have this many nurses shortages and we need more nurses fast. Then why don’t we use more scholarships to pay for schooling? If they used scholarships maybe more students would want to go into nursing. I think that nurses are a huge demand right now and if we don’t try to do something about it. The hospitals are going to be shutting down because of the errors they make as they won’t have enough nurses to double-check others' work. The colleges also need more teachers to help teach nursing students. We are also short of teacher space to teach them.
Do you think the pension plan would help?
Do you think schools might give out scholarships?
Why do you think most nurses leave?
Sources
https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/workforce-issues/where-did-all-the-nurses-go/
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/the-nurse-and-physician-shortage
Replies
Super job Olivia! Great job educating people about the situation and great job replying to people!
I think that a lot of nurses, especially in the past two years, have decided that the workload is becoming too overwhelming. Doctors and other staff rely heavily on nurses in the workplace, which creates a lot of added stress to their job. The pension plan would help promote some nurses to stay but not all as the workload will remain the same if not gradually increase.
I don't think the pension plan would solve everything but I do belive it would solve a little bit of the issue. I think some schools will give out scholarships but I also think others will not and keep the traditinal ways. I think a lot of nurses get burnt out and have to do more work since the staff is so low.
I totally agree with you, schools should give out scholarships. It would help decrease the student's stress levels. Nursing students do experience a lot of stress and anxiety, for some, it could be too much to handle.
I think alot of nurses leave simply because it is a hard hard job. Also alot of them are overworked ecspecially because of covid. I think schools would be smart to hand out scholerships and a higher pension would definitly help. If nurses got paid more and got more breaks they will probably be more likely to stay and reccomnened nursing to others.
I agree with you, a lot of nurses of overworked trying to cover up for the shortage of nurses.
I think that nurses leave because of the stress, lack of sleep, college expences to become a nurse and the pay. I think nurses need to be paid more because of the amount of work they do for our country. I think schools need to give out scholarships, so student have ambition to go to college.
I agree with you. A raise might help the nurses want to stay in that field, as would the Pension plan.
I agree. I think there should be more nurses. I think that the schooling to become a doctor or even a nurse is far too expensive and the prices for nursing and med school should be dropped slightly. I do think that the pension would be a great attention-getter for those thinking of going into the medical field. But overall I think that nurses leave because of the long work hours, exhaustion, and hard work.
I agree with you, a lot of nurses of overworked trying to cover up for the shortage of nurses.
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 5 Next