State's hospitals facing dire nursing shortage

[cougarnurse]

Thoughts or comments, Soldiernurse? State's hospitals face dire nursing shortage


An unprecedented shortage.

That's what the future holds for the nursing industry, according to more than one report coordinated through the Texas Department of State Health Services and affiliated organizations.

From a 2006 report:

The demand for registered nurses in Texas will grow by 86 percent by 2020. The supply, however, will grow by 53 percent without action. Texas will be 71,000 short of the full-time equivalent nurses it will need.

Texas produced 6,300 new graduates in its 84 nursing programs in 2005. That number needs to grow to 9,700 in 2010, to 18,000 in 2015, and to 25,000 in 2020.

A significant increase in enrollment must occur to reach those goals, the report said.

"A large investment of capital and human resources is also required.

Because there is an overabundance of qualified applicants seeking admission to nursing programs, the key factors to increasing enrollment are obtaining a sufficient number of nursing faculty and competitive faculty salaries," the report said.

Why is there a shortage?

The 2004 report "Increasing RN Graduates: Admission, Progression and Graduation in Texas Schools of Nursing 2004" said:

An increased demand for nurses has combined with a decreased supply of nurses who face unfavorable work conditions. Some contributing factors include an aging population and an aging nursing work force and a growing number of uninsured and underinsured people.

That report highlighted the following situations in Texas nursing schools:

Registered nursing programs saw a 63.6 percent increase in bachelor's degree program graduates and a 15.3 percent increase in associate degree program graduates between 1998 and 2004.

Still, a 2005 study by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board said about 4,220 qualified applicants were denied admission.

"This is an indication that the demand exceeds the capacity of nursing schools to educate more students," the RN graduates report said. "Factors such as the shortfall of nursing professors created by an aging cohort of faculty, noncompetitive faculty salaries, and insufficient funds to hire more faculty all impact the capacity of Texas schools of nursing to admit more students."

The state health department said in another document that the economic downturn has temporarily affected the supply and demand for nurses.

Hospitals are treating fewer people because people are delaying "costly elective surgeries," for example. Some nurses who planned to retire are remaining on the job, part-time nurses are seeking more hours and non-working nurses whose spouses have lost jobs are returning to work.

Those factors, though, are only temporarily masking the shortage, which will be compounded as America's aging population drives up the demand for nurses.

"The fundamental causes of the nursing shortage remain unchanged," the document says.

"We lack sufficient numbers of teachers and other resources to educate the nurses we still need."

[Hippocrates3]

The definition of the demographics of an aging population needs to be clarified.
The fertility rate in the USA (the number of births) is decreasing while there is, also, developing an increasing proportion of the population that is older. The result of the aforementioned will be that there will be fewer individuals available to go to nursing school while there will be an increasing demand for medical professionals.
The educational system in the USA is, also, increasingly deficient with regard to producing high school graduates with the intellectual skills requisite for entry into nursing school and successfully completing the same.
Without addressing these fundamental issues concomitant with work place issues such as job security, working conditions, advancement opportunities, and respectful treatment, the means utilized to efficaciously and appropriately address the looming nursing shortage will prove to be ineffectual.