The Week: US edging toward ‘nursing crisis’
The U.S. is edging ever closer to a nursing crisis, news magazine The Week has reported, citing staffing shortages, security concerns and insufficient pay among the reasons American RNs are becoming restless.
Seven thousand nurses across five states voted in early September to authorize a strike if ongoing contract negotiations didn’t move forward in their favor, according to The Week. They’re worried about adequate protection when treating unstable patients and earning wages they feel they deserve. But they’re also nervous about the shortage of nurses in the country—a shortage that’s expected to reach 1 million vacancies by 2024.
The Week wrote part of the problem can likely be attributed to aging—one-third of working nurses will hit retirement age within the next 13 years and 700,000 are expected to retire in the next six—and that’s not a problem easily solved. Even if nursing schools could churn out new graduates quickly enough to replace the aging class, hospitals wouldn’t have the resources or vacancies to train them in time.
Shareholders or the government could fund efforts to expand nursing programs across the country, according to the article, but it looks like the healthcare system is “defaulting” to an increase in lower-paying nursing jobs, like personal care aids and nursing assistants.
Read the full report below:
After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.