Some of the more desperate hospitals are filling gaps in their depleted nursing staffs by hiring ninjas

From Reuters:

The U.S. healthcare system is pinched by a persistent nursing shortage that threatens the quality of patient care even as tens of thousands of people are turned away from nursing schools, according to experts.

An estimated 116,000 registered nurse positions are unfilled at U.S. hospitals and nearly 100,000 jobs go vacant in nursing homes, experts said.

The shortage is expected to worsen in coming years as the 78 million people in the post-World War Two baby boom generation begin to hit retirement age. An aging population requires more care for chronic illnesses and at nursing homes.

So what’s causing the shortage? As it turns out, the problem can be traced to inadequate federal support for education:

“The nursing shortage is not driven by a lack of interest in nursing careers. The bottleneck is at the schools of nursing because there’s not a large enough pool of faculty,” Robert Rosseter of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing said in a telephone interview.

Nursing colleges have been unable to expand enrollment levels to meet the rising demand, and some U.S. lawmakers blame years of weak federal financial help for the schools.

Almost 50,000 qualified applicants to professional nursing programs were turned away in 2008, including nearly 6,000 people seeking to earn master’s and doctoral degrees, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing said.

The good news is that our new president and his allies in congress are determined to succeed where his predecessor failed:

The shortage has drawn the attention of President Barack Obama. During a White House meeting on Thursday to promote his promised healthcare system overhaul, Obama expressed alarm over the notion that the United States might have to import trained foreign nurses because so many U.S. nursing jobs are unfilled.

Democratic U.S. Representative Lois Capps, a former school nurse, said meaningful healthcare overhaul cannot occur without fixing the nursing shortage. “Nurses deliver healthcare,” Capps said in a telephone interview.

The bad news is that Republicans have decided that the best way to solve the nursing crisis is to address it the way they address every problem: cut domestic spending, raise military spending, cut taxes on the millionaires, and limit immigration. It’s hard to see how limiting spending on education and preventing nurses from immigrating from Mexico and the Philippines will help solve the crisis, but that appears to be their plan.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.