Digging Deeper: Nurse Excess or Shortage?: The Effect on a New Nurse

The past decade has experienced great success in publicizing and decreasing the nursing shortage. Articles describing the shortage continue with impressive but disparate projections of its dimension. New degree programs have been created and established programs expanded as increasing numbers of students answer the call, and there are signs that the publicity has succeeded. Recent graduates have experienced difficulties finding employment or postgraduate training positions, which prompt a more detailed look at the numbers. Previously published research projects the nurse shortage for the year 2025 to lie somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 nurses. If it is presumed that these numbers refer to RNs only, then the net of dropout, retirement, and graduation rates suggests that this projected shortage could be misleading. Articles describing the shortage typically exclude detailed supply-and-demand statistics to support their projections. The projected 2025 deficit of nurses is estimated by one source at 500,000. Currently, nursing programs are graduating more than 100,000 and boarding 50,000 new 4-year-degree RNs per year. According to the National Health Service, more than 10,000 nurses retire each year, yielding a net addition of 40,000 new nurses per year, which yields a net supply by 2025 of 600,000. It seems that the more than 3,000 nursing schools are already graduating enough nurses to carry the loss. The universities have increased the supply of nurse graduates; now, the real shortcoming lays in the dearth of nurse residency programs that help transition the new nurses from the books to the bedside. Most nursing jobs require a year of experience, a luxury allowed by the increased graduates and decreased shortage. The real crisis now appears to be a logjam caused by the increased supply with the near absence of transition training. The resulting frustration of the new graduates, if not fixed, is likely to have adverse affects on retention and supply.