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Supply and Demand for Registered NursesBy Karina L. GordinThe post of a registered nurse is particularly important both in the hospital and educational setting given that many responsibilities, which bear great consequences, depend on the nurse to be carried out proficiently. In a hospital environment, which may seem sterile and somber, a nurse’s smile may be very encouraging to the patient who depends not only on such human contact but on consistent monitoring of vital signs, administration of medicine in a timely manner, and a variety of other essential duties reserved to the nursing post. This quality of care may be critically compromised if an emerging crisis in the healthcare industry is not reversed. Specifically, a nursing shortage across America is generating a variety of preventable complications in the medical care system, which includes medication errors, overcrowding in emergency rooms, and even unexpected patient deaths. On the educational front, the shortage of registered nurses means a shortage of hospital health educators and nursing programs, which in turn cannot meet the demand of the number of well-qualified student applicants. It is difficult to pinpoint every contributing factor behind the growing concern, however, these trends, amongst others shortly examined in this paper, contribute to the dramatically increasing nursing shortage every year. The president of Human Resources at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Mary E. Kelleher, asserts that within the last 20 to 25 years, nursing diploma schools have been disestablished in numerous hospitals, therefore shifting the nursing education from hospital nursing schools to academic centers that offer 2 year and 4 year degree programs. As a direct consequence, the number of educational slots required by healthcare employers is lagging as the academic centers receive an inadequate number of nurse educators. “Academic centers require nurses with MSN or higher degrees as educators, and not enough nurses possess those advanced degrees to fill the vacant teaching slots within the college systems. If you check with the area colleges, you will see that there is up to 8-10 times the number of applicants for the number of educational slots available to fill.”[1] James M. Keefe, Vice President of Inpatient Services at Cooley Dickinson adds that the pay-scale for advanced degree nurses with a capacity to teach is considerably lower, when compared with pay-scale of “bedside” nurses, in this way further contributing to a substantial shortage, by means of nurse educators. In terms of the standard pay-scale’s affect on the nursing shortage, Mary E. Kelleher suggests that essentially the salary is adequate enough to have drawn men into the profession, which was unheard of roughly thirty years ago. “The current salary levels for a new nurse who graduates with a two-year associates degree exceeds $60,000 per year when one includes the base salary, plus additional compensation for working on weekends, off shifts, holidays, etc. Experienced nurses earn considerably more.”[2] However, as noted by Kelleher, an appetite for increased wages is permanently unsatisfied, and that the wages are increasing more rapidly than a revenue source’s available funding to pay for the care of patients.
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