The Nursing Shortage
...that are unfilled in hospitals across the country. This is suppose to worsen in the years to come. By the year 2008 there will be a demand for an additional 450, 000 RNs. “By 2020 there will be at least 400,000 fewer nurses available to provide care for those who will be in need.”(Conway 1) The average age of a RN is 45. Within the next 10 years, 40 percent of working RNs will be 50 years or older and this means that in next 15 years almost half of RN workforce will reach retirement age. This will cause the shortage to become an even bigger problem then is already is because there will be so many less nurses because many of them are retiring before we can get nursing students into schools. This is requiring some nurses to stay in the profession longer because they feel as they can’t leave. Many nurses are very fed up with the hospitals, so they are turning to private agencies to work for. “Almost 40 percent of nurses now work for an agency.” (Dwokin 31) Many hospitals are forced to have to turn to agencies for help to fill there spaces. 56 percent of hospitals use agencies to get nurses. With an agency nurses let them know when they are able to work, so if they only want to work on day a week that is all they have to work, with at a hospital you have a weekly schedule. And with agencies there is more freedom to come and go. The only bad thing that comes with working for an agency is that some of them do not have benefits. The hospitals are getting hit hard with many problems such as losing money by paying for the nurses from the agencies. They are spending millions of dollars each year. This is often a much high cost per person that for regular nursing staff, but hospitals are faced with a sever problem and that have to do all they can to find nurses to fill the empty places. Hospitals are trying ever other option but there are none other there so they are faced with the big costs. “Hospitals are hoping to save money, by have nurses carry bigger loads at one time.” (DeCarlo 1) Nurses are the ones that everything takes a toll on. They are faced with extreme stress and they are now starting to be required to work mandatory overtime because the shortage is so bad. “On average nurses work an extra eight and a half week of overtime per year.” (Conway 1) Many nurses fell like they are way to over worked due to staffing problems. Some hospitals had to cut support staffing forcing nurses to take on time consuming, unskilled, tasks such as cleaning rooms and transporting patients. 21 percent of current nurses say they expect to leave nursing within the next 5 years due to being overworked and stressed. “Surveys found that nurse considered leaving nursing due to stress, irregular hours, working conditions, lack of staffing and low wages.” (Shell 1) As a result of being overworked the quality of patient care is going down. Nurses usually care for about 10 patients at a time so that everyone can be take care of. Many patients are getting the proper care that they need so they aren’t getting the attention they need which can lead to health risks, such as not receiving their meds a the proper time. RNs sometime hurt the people that they are working to help because they are so busy they don’t take their time. “90% of long term care patients lack sufficient nurse staffing to provide even the basic care.” Conway 12” Nurses feel that the direct time for patients has dropped drastically due to the shortage. Hospitals believe that a lack of nurses is to blame for thousands of deaths caused by problems such as medication errors, patient falls, and hospital infections. Nurse staffing levels were found to contribute to 50 percent of ventilator-related incidents, 42 percent of surgery-related incidents, 25 percent of transfusion incidents, delays in treatment, and infant abductions, 19 percent of medication errors, 14 percent of in-patient suicides, and 14 percent of patient falls. The shortage has left us with a hug gap to fill in the nursing program. There are thousands of nursing positions open in every hospital and in every department. Right now we are having trouble filling these stops but hopefully in years to come more and more people will become interested in nursing are they will take their part in fixing the problem. Nursing jobs for RNs are expected to be very good. Nursing employment of registered nurses is expected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through 2010. Thousands of nursing jobs will result from the need to replace experienced nurses who leave the occupation, especially as the median age of the registered nurse population continues to rise.” The short and long term employment pictures for nursing are bright.” (Swanson 169) “Salaries depend a lot on the position help, amount of education and geographic location.” (Swanson 167) as the shortage gets worse hospitals are raising salaries. Nurses that have a lot of experience with there job average about 41,000 dollars a year. Salaries for nurses are up more than 10 percent for 2004, according to a recently released report on compensation. The increases are largely connected to the nation's nursing shortage forcing hospitals to offer more competitive salaries. “Many local hospitals are reporting their lowest nurse vacancy rates in several years. Most are below the state average of 13.3 percent and the national average of 11 percent. Officials say stepped-up retention efforts and recruiting nurses are part of the prescription for success.” (Shapiro 1) They are using many strategies like preceptor and mentoring arrangements, scholarship/work payback agreements, private and public funding initiatives to support the education of future nurses, and service/education partnership models. Hospitals in St. Louis have set up recruitment offices for interested people to go to and get information on a job in health care. This should help with the rising of nurses and help the shortage in Missouri. Many hospitals are offering sign on bonuses anywhere from $200 to $14,000 more a year for nurses to come work for them. Sign-on bonuses are based on the type of position and the level of difficulty of recruiting for that position. Almost every hospital in the county offers some type of sign on bonus to every nurse they hire. They offer these bonuses to guarantee the hospital nurses to cover there patients. Hospitals that are in need of more nurses will offer a higher bonus to attract more people. This can be a problem if they are giving out to much money. It can hurt the hospitals financially if they offer 10,000 dollars to ever person they hire. Hospitals are also using private recruiter to go over seas to find nurses. They go to places like London, Asia, China, and the Philippines. Some hospitals pay private recruiters anywhere from 500 or 5,000 dollars for every person they bring back to the U.S. “In one case a hospital guaranteed a private recruiter more than a million dollars to deliver 235 foreign nurses. Private recruiters have job fairs in foreign countries to recruit as many nurses as they can to come back to the U.S. with them. Almost ever hospital in the country has been to the Philippines looking for nurses. The nurses from the Philippines are the easiest to get to come back to the U.S. because the Philippine’s have more nurses then they can employ. Because we a...