I need help with a paper everyone!

[sharkygirl99]

Hello everyone, my name is Leah,I'm in high school and I came on the nursing forum because I am writing a school paper on the issue of the nursing shortage and the problems it is causing. I am in Massachusetts and the paper is supposed to be about semi-local issues, so those of you from the New England area who would be interested in helping would be perfect, but I would appreciate ANY stories or experiences. I have email, yahoo messenger, Skype, and AIM so if you would be interested in giving me hand and have one of these, message me here on the forum and we can chat.

Thanks so much!
~Leah~

[jbrandt2]

Hi Leah,
This is a complicated problem - you have to look at it from several sides. First, the underlying issue is that there are not enough PROFESSORS to teach all of the students who want to be nurses. This is true of both RN-BSN and RN-AD programs I'm in a program that had 300 people apply last year, and they could only accept 45 because they simply didn't have the staff or clinical sites to properly teach everyone. Another problem is that we have very few men in nursing - right now only 6% of nurses are male, and that's increased since 2000. For females, it is a profession that is so over-gendered and misunderstood that many stay away for personal reasons. After all, back in the day women could only be nurses or teachers, and now that we have so many options why would we choose one that is so stereotypical of women? Also, nurses are not just in the hospital setting - I BELIEVE I saw a statistic that only 60% of nurses work in hospitals, but don't quote me on that. Long term care facilities, mental institutions, home care, patient education, surgical centers, outpatient offices, hospice, travel nurses...there are tons and tons of opportunities for nurses. This is great if you're a nurse - not so great if you're a hospital trying to attract nurses to work crazy hours of overtime because you're already short-staffed. A similar situation is that there are SO many levels of nursing - Certified Nurse's Assistant, Medical Assistant, Licensed Practical Nurse, Registered Nurse, Advanced Practice Nurse, Nurse Practioner, and Doctorate of Nursing. Some RN's go on to be APNs or above, thus contributing to staff nurse shortages. Some people don't go all the way to being RNs, and are comfortable with being CNAs, MAs, and LPNs, all of whom play an important role in a patient's care.

Some hospitals have started recruiting from overseas, mostly from the Phillippines, because they are so desperate for nurses. That's a VERY interesting topic, if you can work it into your paper.

Hope that helps! At least this is a good place to start researching further on the issues of nursing that interest you - there are plenty of good web sites that can give you better statistics and ideas about the nursing shortage.

Best of luck on the paper!

(by the way, I'm in Chicago - not terribly helpful for the "local" part of your paper, but you should also contact the Public Relations department of your local hospitals - they should be happy to talk to you.)

[sharkygirl99]

Thanks jbrandt, that IS helpful and I had no clue about the Philippines bit, I'll definitely look into that further. It's required that I have one personal experience obtained by interview/email which would be great buuuut you're the only person who has responded to the post, and the paper is due by friday. Thanks again for your input, everything helps.