Declared Statistics

Career opportunities for registered nurses are expected to grow by about 23% in 2006 and 2016. This prediction was declared by the Department of Labor of the United States with around 587,000 new job openings. This is great news for nurses who have been waiting all these years to land to a health care job. Partly, the demands for RN employment are driven by the increasing members of the aging population. But the Unites States Department of Labor discussed how their research showed that there won’t be enough nurses to fill in these positions, specifically the licensed ones.

More Nursing Opportunities Needed

As mentioned earlier, job vacancies for RN’s are gradually increasing in 2006 to 2016. This situation seems to revolve around these reasons:

• Increase of the elderly population. Everyone gets old and baby boomers are now reaching retirement age. People in this age bracket tend to become more dependent in other in fulfilling some services such as those that concerns the hygiene and health. This is the first and foremost reason why services of health care professionals especially nurses are more than needed than ever.
• Present employed nurses are nearing retirement. The average age of currently working nurses is 42.5. This means that they will be retiring soon enough and needs younger licensed nurses to fill in their positions.
• Increase in overall population. Logically speaking, population growth means more services such as those which are related to health care. This means bigger employment opportunities for nurses too.
• Declining enrollment in nursing schools. It’s not a secret to everyone that nursing students are now decreasing in number. This means lesser competition in filling in future nursing positions.
• Increasing rate of RN turnover rate. With the limited force of nurses hired nowadays, most of them are taking additional patient assignment and responsibilities. This makes employed RN’s quite their jobs early. Statistics shows that the turner rate for RNs is quite high. This is also associated with the shifting and scheduling which more often is unpredictable.
• Faculties are more needed in nursing schools. Especially in US, nursing schools are in need of more staff to educate students to become good nurses too. Another thing is the age of current faculty members which is about 62.5 in average. This means soon enough they will be retiring and more positions will be opened.

Solutions to Nursing Shortage

Based on the shortage of workers in this field, experts have proposed solutions. Although fixing this issue in health care employment may need more solutions, certain changes such the items listed below will help in changing the course of the employment.

Proposed solutions:

1. Modifying nursing programs and curriculum. Nurses know well how hard the nursing program is. With those piles of reading books and tiring hospital duties individuals tend to steer clear from getting involved with the program if not for the promised demands of the job.
2. More job openings and increase the security of the job. Lesser students are enrolling in nursing programs due to the fact that this degree covers a limited range of working opportunities. In addition, most jobs offered are just part-time positions which further disappoint others from getting hook with nursing.
3. Reverse bidding. The idea of reverse bidding goes like this. The nurse fills in some details over the internet and opens the shifts vacant through a web-based system. The registered nurse gets a job with regards to the filled in details of qualifications.
4. Increase salary. Okay, I don’t have to stress more on this part since everyone knows how nurses are working too hard yet are paid very low. No one would ever want to go through four years of study and find out that a free community service is waiting for you at the end.

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