Shortages And Growing Nursing Vacancies In The USThe US federal government has admitted the existing acute nursing shortages facing the country. Nursing vacancies, mainly due to this shortage, have grown to unmanageable proportions in both the hospitals and colleges and universities across the US. The shortage is in nursing faculty manning nursing schools in the US. Together with this the federal government is also worried about the shortages of students who want to study nursing to join the health care industry as its most important member. This has made the government collect the requisite info on the sad state of affairs that pervades the health care industry and associated education today. One of the studies have pointed out that although licensed RNs (Registered Nurses) constitute one of the largest health care professionals, their shortage will increase to about 3,40,000 full-time nurse positions by the year 2020. Moreover, the studies have indicated that at the current rate of nurses entering the health care profession, the number of nursing vacancies is still frightening. Nursing vacancies continue to remain unfilled in public health, home care, and long-term care. Even the Department of Veteran Affairs, the largest employer of RNs in the US has nursing vacancies unfilled to the extent of 10%. The vacancy rate of RNs in hospitals is about 8.5% and a 2005 study estimated that they will require at least 118,000 more RNs to man emergency care, which is hampered in their absence. The other daunting aspect of all these statistics is the prospect that in the years to come the nursing shortage will become more acute. This will be because the ageing workforce will retire and not as many fresh inductees will join the nursing sector, projections have forecast. All these statistics spell doom for patients as they will not receive the care that is due to them in hospitals in the country. The situation is made graver by the shortage of nursing instructors who have turned to medical practice as it offers more lucre. Lastly, faced with the prospect of lower educational standard of teaching, even those students who are interested in joining the nursing industry, have turned away from it. The US government must therefore take appropriate steps to ensure that adequate number of nursing faculty are secured and retained in the profession. This can be done by infusion of funds to counterbalance the lopsidedness in structure in favor of clinical practitioners and those working in purely research settings. The federal government can do this funding by increasing the budget for the Advanced Education Nursing line items in the Title VIII programs. Moreover, the cause of filling up the considerable nursing vacancies will be furthered by such funding. This is because students supported by this funding will become the pool from which future faculty members can be drawn. |