By Doug Eaton
Anyone who has spent time recently as a patient in a hospital is likely aware of a serious issue that promises only to become more profound before a solution can be found and implemented.
The national nursing shortage is resulting in a widespread lack of skilled nurses who are needed to care for individual patients and the population as a whole. At present, registered nurses (RNs) are the largest health care occupation in the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are about 2.3 million employed RNs in the U.S.
A number of national studies lend credence to the existence of this shortage and the urgent need to increase the numbers entering the nursing profession.
According to the November 2007 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Labor Review, more than 1 million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2016.
Lack Of Funding And Resources
One of the biggest contributing factors to the nursing shortage is a decreased number of graduates from qualified nursing programs. Caren Lyne, chief nursing officer at Northwest Medical Center Springdale, said there are plenty of people who want to become nurses, but they are having trouble getting accepted into programs because “the admission criteria is pretty strict.”
These nursing programs are necessary in order to produce RNs to provide quality patient care in hospitals and clinics. However, a lack of funding and resources to these programs means nurse training has become a sticky issue.
Many experts cite this serious lack of funding in the nation’s nursing programs that result in thousands of qualified applicants being rejected from nursing programs each year as the prime root of the problem.
Despite the fact that interest in nursing careers remains strong, many individuals seeking to enter the nursing profession cannot be accommodated in applicable programs because of lack of available resources; namely faculty and classroom constraints.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing explains the extent of the problem on its Web site:
“According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing report on 2007-08 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, U.S. nursing schools turned away 40,285 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2007 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors and budget constraints. Almost three-quarters (71.4 percent) of the nursing schools responding to the 2007 survey pointed to faculty shortages as a reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into entry-level nursing programs.”
This observation is also shared by those in the education arena.
Geraldine C. Ellison, Ph.D., RN, who is an associate professor and director of  the Institute for Community Partnerships at the University of Oklahoma College of Nursing, provides a possible explanation for the lack of faculty.
“We are finding that many people who may be a candidate to become a faculty member often go into the private sector due to the prospects for a better-paying salary.”
Job Burnout
Another major reason contributing to the nursing shortage is a factor perhaps not as quantifiable — job burnout.
“Health care is 24/7 and I think it’s been hard to find folks that are willing to work weekends and the nightshift,” Lyne said. “I think they do it for a while and they get burned out on it.”
Another reason why nurses experience job burnout is the nursing shortage itself, which therefore becomes the Catch-22. As fewer nurses enter the work force, doctors’ offices, hospitals and clinics are forced to keep their existing nurses on the floor for longer periods.
Spanish-Speakers Becoming Priority
Changes in patient demographics are compounding the problem brought on by the nursing shortage.
Not only is the overall patient population aging, but the rapid growth of Spanish-speaking patients is creating a new dynamic.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics are the largest and fastest-growing racial/ethnic minority in the United States.
When Spanish-speaking patients need medical care, many health care providers rely on telephone-based interpretation services or use Spanish-speaking volunteers and other staff to help translate, but must proceed with caution to ensure they do not violate federal patient-privacy laws.
One program addressing the shortage is at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing.
The nursing school was awarded a three-year, $601,000 federal grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration. Some of the grant is specifically earmarked to hire a person to recruit Hispanic and Spanish-speaking students to a weekend nursing program.
Local Perspective
According to an article by published April 5 in The Washington Post, jobs are scarce for nurses because the economic downturn has “some nurses postponing retirement and others resuming their careers for financial reasons.”
That’s not the case in Northwest Arkansas. Among Northwest Medical Center in Bentonville and Springdale, and Willow Creek Women’s Hospital there are 100 nursing positions open.
“We haven’t quite seen the drastic change that there may have been in other urban areas, so I think we’ve been fortunate,” Lyne said.
While the recession may slow the growth of the shortage, the report states it won’t resolve the problem. Lyne said one key to fixing the nursing shortage is offering more flexible scheduling.
“I think it’s just really being a little bit more creative and trying to adapt to some of the folks’ lifestyles so that there’s a better balance between work and personal life,” she said.

Antoinette Grajeda contributed to this report.