According to a recent fact sheet developed by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, which touts itself as the Voice of Academic Nursing, the rising demand for nurses is outpacing the capacity of nursing schools, exacerbating the shortage of Registered Nurses nationwide. That gap is expected to widen further as Baby Boomers’ need for health care increases. Recent estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Projections 2016- 2026 name Registered Nursing as one of the top occupations in terms of job growth, with the RN labor force increasing from 2.9 million in 2016 to 3.4 million by 2026.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics also expects the need for new nurses to be more than 200,000 annually nationwide. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), marking its 50th year in 2019, is working diligently to “shape legislation, identify strategies, and form collaborations to address the increasing shortage.” As many as 1 million registered nurses are expected to retire by 2030, which is expected to cause a huge loss in institutional knowledge and expertise that will be difficult to replace. According to the American Journal of Medical Quality, the hardest-hit areas for shortages by 2030 will be the South and West.
While enrollment in nursing schools nationwide continues to increase, the 2018-2019 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, published by the AACN, claims that nursing schools in the United States “turned away more than 75,000 applicants in 2018 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, as well as budget constraints.” Two out of every three nursing schools reported shortages in faculty as the main reason for not accepting all qualified program applicants. Insufficient staffing in health care is causing the problem to become even more dire. Increased stress levels of registered nurses is negatively impacting job satisfaction and causing many nurses to leave the profession entirely.
Dr. Linda Aiken released findings from a study of acute care hospitals in western European countries in the July 2017 issue of BMJ Quality & Safety, which found that a “greater proportion of professional nurses at the bedside is associated with better outcomes for patients and nurses.” In addition, adding assistive personnel who lack professional nurse qualifications “may contribute to preventable deaths, erode care quality, and contribute to nurse shortages.” But some health care providers simply have no choice than to reduce the nursing skill mix by bringing in less or simply untrained assistive personnel to combat overall shortages in care providers.
While there are some examples of statewide initiatives to increase the number of trained registered nurses, especially those with baccalaureate or higher degrees, most states do not have programs in place to combat the shortages. According to a report from the Governor’s Council for Workforce and Economic Development, Oklahoma lags behind the national average with just 700 nurses per 100,000 residents, compared to 1150 nationwide. Tulsa Community College’s School of Nursing will be admitting new nursing students every semester starting in the Fall of 2020 to help combat the shortages. But the hardest positions to fill - that of nursing faculty - continue to be difficult to attract young professionals. The starting pay in a faculty position is around $50,000 while an RN can be paid upwards of $70,000 starting off in a hospital setting. Cuts in funding for higher education statewide have been felt particularly hard in the nursing community, making it even more difficult to bring in faculty and graduate new Registered Nurses to fill the demand.