Chipps Hobday 1

Matthew Chipps, Sean Hobday

Ms. Townley

Composition

17 October 2019

The Nursing Shortage in America

If you have ever been to a hospital you would know that you can call a nurse at anytime and they

would be there to assist your every need. At the push of a button they would be there to help and care for

you. Well nowadays that reality of hands-on at any given moment is going away. We are currently going

through a nurse shortage, leading to less hands-on care, as there are more people who are in need of care

and not enough people to take care of them. This is a haunting reality that we have to face nowadays, with

less nurses more people will be overworked and less will get done overall.

The overwhelming amount of people currently enrolled in the healthcare system is greater than

that of any previous generation. With 41 million people in the healthcare system (Schneider et. al. 2) and

22.2 million of those people being baby boomers (American Hospital Association 2) this really brings

into perspective how many Baby Boomers there actually are. There was a 13% decrease in births from the

Baby Boomer generation to Gen X (Fry par. 5). With the drop of 74 million babies to 66 million, roughly

8 million people, there is a substantial difference in the number of people that will be able to take care of

the older generations.

In addition to a deficit in the available population, there is also not enough faculty to provide for

the education of more nurses. If we were to provide more opportunity of education and provide benefits

for those in nursing, this might encourage them to finish their degree or present the idea of that field of

work. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated in 2018 that 1.1 million new nurses will be needed by

2024 to fill for all the new positions and retiring nurses (qtd. in Roboznieks par. 4). 78,000 applicants to
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bachelor and advanced-degree nursing programs were turned away on account of not enough faculty

(Roboznieks par. 4).

Although there are some reasons not to take action, one of them being the obvious problem of the

Baby Boomers getting older and towards the end of their lives, the needs outweigh the risks. The age

range of the Baby Boomers is 55 to 75 years old (Fry) so they are getting to the last stages of their lives,

once they have passed hospitals will be overstaffed and the efforts to fix the problem would create a new

unemployment problem. Another reason is the cost of hiring new nurses and creating more education

programs would be detrimental to the economy; it would be too expensive for hospitals and governments

together. This is not the case, though, the state of Florida is forecasting a $226 million loss in revenue

through 2025 as a direct result of the projected nursing shortage (qtd. in Snavely par. 12).

There are many solutions that could be employed in order to solve the problem of nursing, or

therefore the lack of it. One solution is government subsidising of nursing programs and schools. If the

government were to do this it would not only fix the faculty problem but also reduce debt of those in

nursing school, allowing them to continue towards their professional degree. An idea that could solve this

would be “traveling nurses” that would move to hospitals that need them, this would allow some hospitals

that could be somewhat overstaffed to help out the other hospitals which do not have as many people on

deck to help those in need. Another proposed solution would be to provide benefits for nurses. If we were

to get more nurses we could give them better pay and possibly give them more time off as to give them

more time to relax from the busyness of hospital life. Better pay could possibly encourage more people to

become nurses. More time off would also decrease the risk of burnout in nurses as they might currently

overwork themselves and not perform as well as they normally do. The easiest option to fix the problem

with our healthcare system would be to add more government funding so those who want to pursue and

thrive in that field of work are able to do so comfortably.

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Works Cited

1. American Hospital Association. How Boomers Will Change Healthcare. May 2007,

www.aha.org/system/files/content/00-10/070508-boomerreport.pdf.

2. Fry, Richard. “Millennials Expected to Outnumber Boomers in 2019.” Pew Research Center, 1

Mar. 2018,

www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers/.

3. Robeznieks, Andis. “Looming Nursing Shortage Fueled by Faculty Shortfall.” Modern

Healthcare, 24 Jan. 2015,

www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150124/MAGAZINE/301249971/looming-nursin

-shortage-fueled-by-faculty-shortfall.

4. Rosseter, Robert. “News & Information.” American Association of Colleges of Nursing: The

Voice of Academic Nursing,

www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Fact-Sheet.

5. Rosseter, Robert. “News & Information.” American Association of Colleges of Nursing: The

Voice of Academic Nursing,

www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Shortage.

6. Schneider, Eric C, et al. “Health Care in America.” The Commonwealth Fund, 14 Mar. 2019,

features.commonwealthfund.org/health-care-in-america.

7. Snavely, Timothy M. “Data Watch. A Brief Economic Analysis of the Looming Nursing

Shortage

In the United States.” Nursing Economic$, vol. 34, no. 2, Mar. 2016, pp. 98–100.

EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=114616391&site=eds-live.