Nursing Shortage in America

It is no secret that America is facing a shortage of nurses. The current shortage is very real and it is not like any that has been experienced in the past. There is evidence to support the shortage in that there are fewer nurses entering the workforce. With the reduced number of nurses entering the workforce, America is left with an aging nursing workforce. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be about 1.2 million vacancies emerging for registered nurses in the years 2014 and 2022 (Snavely, 2016). By the year 2025, the shortfall of nurses will be more than twice as large as any other nursing shortage that has ever been experienced. The looming shortage is mostly due to the rising incidence of chronic diseases, the limited capacity of nursing schools, and an aging workforce. It is reported that there are around one million registered nurses who are over the age 50 years, which means that one-third of the current nursing workforce is going to retire in the next 10 to 15 years. By the year 2024, it is projected that nearly 700,000 nurses will leave or retire from the labor force.
The aging of nurses is the most critical problem that is facing the nursing workforce at the moment. The current average age for registered nurses is 47.3 years, and the registered nurses who are aged below 30 years representing less than 10 percent of the working nursing population. This clearly demonstrates the huge shortage that we are facing and how this shortage is going to continue. Because of this shortage, there are some hospitals that have been forced to close some units, cancel surgeries, and divert patients because they do not have the adequate number of professional nursing personnel to run the facility.
It is not that there are no nursing graduates who are joining the industry. It is estimated that nearly 155,000 new nursing graduates entered the nursing workforce in 2017. This shows that the number is growing, but the nursing education has not kept pace meaning that there are many more nurses who could have entered the labor force in any given year. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing has reported that American nursing schools are turning away students. For example, in the year 2013, the nursing schools turned away 79,659 qualified applicants for graduate nursing programs due to insufficient faculty numbers, classroom space, budget constraints, clinical sites, and clinical preceptors (MacLean et al., 2014). Once again, aging is coming back to the forefront and is the main factor for the students being turned away. It is not possible for nursing schools to expand their cohorts if they do not have adequate faculty members.
With a shortage of nurses, the hospital could be forced to shut down or the few available nurses would have to work for longer hours and offer financial incentives. This might be good in the short term, but with time the nurses will start having burnouts and this might affect how they perform their duties.


References
MacLean, L., Hassmiller, S., Shaffer, F., Rohrbaugh, K., Collier, T., & Fairman, J. (2014). Scale, causes, and implications of the primary care nursing shortage. Annual review of public health, 35, 443-457.
Snavely, T. M. (2016). A brief economic analysis of the looming nursing shortage in the United States. Nursing Economics, 34(2), 98.