Shortage of teachers means shortage of nurses

That means that every year, as more nurses retire or leave because of burnout, there are fewer newly minted nurses to replace them, even as the enormous baby boom generation reaches retirement age and puts more demands on the health care system.  

“I think the ramification is the quality of care that is provided to our patients in the setting here at the medical center,” said Cindy Kamikawa, vice president of nursing at the Queens Medical Center on Oahu in Hawaii. “We need nursing care 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to care for our patients, and we know that nursing makes a difference.”

Too many openings, not enough supply
Another ramification is cannibalization. Hospitals with severe shortages are casting wide recruiting nets, luring nurses from other hospitals and causing resentment among fellow administrators.

In May, Beth Israel Medical Center in New York caused an uproar in Indianapolis when it placed an ad in The Indianapolis Star offering senior registered nurses $15,000 signing bonuses to pack up and move north.

Similarly, St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., raised eyebrows last month when it held a recruitment drive offering a buffet table and free $25 gas cards just to get experienced nurses to walk in.

St. Joseph’s administrators said they needed nurses in the operating room, the dialysis unit and other departments, and they are offering hefty signing bonuses in a city where competition for nurses is fierce among four major hospitals with significant staffing shortages.

Hospitals and nursing schools are also pursuing nurses with untraditional backgrounds. An especially attractive market is men, who make up only 6 percent of the nation’s nurses, according to figures from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Case studies by the University of Virginia School of Nursing uncovered recruitment efforts by some Southern hospitals at NASCAR races and among men with technical skills or service-oriented backgrounds, such as Boy Scouts or military corpsmen.

George Rouse, a father of four in Cleveland, left his career as a computer programmer to go to nursing school.

“It’s very, very, scary switching careers. It’s very scary going into the unknown,” Rouse said. But with a large family, he was attracted by the promise of job stability in a field where his skills will be in demand.

“There’s so much opportunity,” he said. “It’s a career of what you make of it.”

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