The Nursing Shortage Summary

There are so many reasons for the drastic nursing shortage in our country. The author Geraldine Brown Ph.D., RN in the newsletter titled “The Nursing Shortage” put most of the blame on the school system for this shortage. There are several explanations of why nurses are lacking, but I can’t see how the school system is to blame. The author’s argument was inaccurate on several different counts. She put more emphasis on the schools than she did on any other situational factor. In view of the newsletter I have to disagree with the following statement, “It appears from research that many of the baccalaureate programs of nursing are simply admitting students so that their enrollment records are impressive” (Brown, 2003). The schools are paid to

The newsletter claimed that the schools were not doing a good job at educating students on the importance of nursing, and that there were a lot of nursing students that were just receiving a nursing degree as a stepping stone for another degree (Brown, 2003). The truth of the matter is there are many employers who would prefer an experienced nurse over a new graduate. There are many nursing students that spend several months after graduation searching for a job. While there are being predictions made many RN’s say that they are unable to find jobs, this holds true especially for new nurses as they are finding that the facilities that are hiring are only interested in experienced nurses (Nelson, 2009). It doesn’t make sense because you can’t receive experience unless you are given experience, but nonetheless it is irresponsible to place blame on our educators for this nursing shortage when it is clearly an economical

Due to financial burdens some nurses are not job hopping quite as often or either delaying retirement which slows down the turnover in some positions (Nelson, 2009). However, there are some that may think that nursing has become a burdensome job, and that the job itself has become an unattractive career to many due to long hours and low salary (Brown, 2003). If this were the case nurses would not be delaying their retirement to stay employed as a nurse while continuing to be miserable. Nurses are a very important part of our healthcare system, and a part of me hopes that nurses are in this field for their patients not for glamour or just the money. Times are tight and nurses need money too which is the cause for less of a turn-over in some settings. It is unsettling for me to think that these nurses have this career for purely selfish reasons, such as they were forced to go to school to be a nurse due to loss of job or multiple other reasons (Brown, 2003). The economy can be one of the reasons for the shortage due to it costing more to train a new grad nurse, but please don’t make the economy out to be the reason we have nursing students in a classroom. These nursing students are in the classrooms because at one point in their life they thought to themselves that they might actually enjoy a fulfilling