Nurse shortage

Nursing Shortage? Says Who?

Hospitals say there is a major shortage of nurses in the U.S. Nursing groups say there are plenty of nurses – just not enough nurses willing to work in hospitals under current conditions. Others believe the problem is not so much a shortage of nurses as it is a shortage of nursing where nursing is needed. Whether there really is a shortage of nurses, and how to address it, if there is one, depends in large part on the answer to that question. Learn more about the different perspectives on this question from the Stat article “Is there a nursing [...]

Lack of Instructors Impedes Fixing Nurse Shortage

The current shortage of nurses across the U.S. can be traced in part to the lack of training opportunities for aspiring nurses and not to a lack of people seeking to pursue nursing as a career. Last year U.S. nursing programs rejected nearly 80,000 qualified applicants because they did not have the capacity train them. Driving this problem are three major challenges. First is the lack of nursing school faculty: nearly 2000 full-time faculty positions remain unfilled, and many part-time positions as well, a problem caused by low salaries; working nurses often earn much more than nursing instructors. Another complication: [...]