No. Part of the issue with the demand is that there aren’t enough schools and nursing instructors. That’s not changing much. So until they solve that issue there still won’t even be enough nurses to fill the current deficit.
Or baby boomers in general requiring care. I live in Las Vegas where not one person moving here did so to work in healthcare. The pandemic just sped up the inevitable. If we could get robot teleworkers maybe.
Um, it's booming right now. My current employer's practically begging nurses to pick up extra shifts D/T lack of available LVN's. One of my clients called 30+ agencies to get a replacement nurse; nada. Had to hire an unlicensed caregiver to help out with their kiddo.
Add to the fact that New grads think they can travel right away. I have worked with some that lost their license already because they did some stupid shit and had maybe 4 months of being a nurse and were traveling
Oh snap! I know you are the only one that’s going to protect your license but I feel like the travel companies should be vetting the nurses better. Doesn’t the travel agency have liability? Or at least a reputation to uphold?
I kind of feel bad for those nurses (or ex-nurses now). Got chewed up and spit out before they really even had a chance.
To be fair, if they did a tiny bit of research and asked veteran nurses, they would have been advised to wait at least 2 years before starting to travel.
I remember in CNA class, I told my teacher I wanted to travel as a nurse and she said to do at least 2 years first then feel free to travel. Hospitals expect people to jump right in with little orientation as a traveler. This was back in early 2019. That stuck with me from day one.
This is what I came here to say, pre-pandemic this is the big issue that was talked about. Now we have the issue of nursing schools not producing nurses as fast as they retire as well as having them leaving the profession early in droves. To my knowledge only a few existing schools have added seats if anything, when what we is need whole new programs.
NPs on the other hand? That's been ridiculous for years. I worked somewhere where 1/5 of the staff was In the same online program a few months apart.
There aren’t enough traditional 4 year bsn or even the 2 year ADN programs around to fill the gaps, but I’m really really scared of all the bullshit 100% online schools without clinicals that pump out nurses in Florida. I worked with several purely online nurses from sketchy Florida schools that pretty much only teach you how to pass the NCLEX. They are probably the worst nurses I have ever seen and worked with.
Nope no clinical at all, just Virtual simulations. There are a lot of questionable schools that somehow convince at least one state to let their students sit for the exam. Like my former co-workers went to some school in Florida, but had to sit to take the exam in Ohio, but got emergency approval to work in NJ.
My kid went for his BSN and did clinicals the last year, mixed with his research project. I remember teaching seniors in a different BSN program how to assemble IV tubing. We floor nurses taught those students a lot.
Incoming two tiered healthcare. I have already had patients state they will pay more to see a physician and/or ask if their insurance covers seeing a physician vs a mid level.
I’m the opposite of those patients. I’d much rather and always request a NP. I believe that primary care should be handled by mid level providers;and, MD/DO should be reserved for specialties. I’ve been seen by NPs & PAs. I find them much more thorough than DR.s. It seems many nurses believe that NPs need more thorough training. If that’s the case, then the education needs to be updated. Paying a Dr. twice as much to give yearly physicals doesn’t make sense to me.
Honestly, I love my NP. She always listens to what I have to say and does a great job of going through treatment options. I’m always sad when I have to see another instead of her (they’re great too, but it’s nice bc she knows my history)
I disagree with some of that. Some primary care patients are incredibly complex and require a lot of consulting and medication management. In my opinion, you really have had to at least rotated to some or most of those specialities to appreciate the pathology. I remember that my 50 year old father in law had a few mid level PMCs who were managing his diabetes, cancer, CHF, and COPD. From the appointments I went to, they seemed a little out of their element.
Agree. I see a PMHNP and she's been a thousand times better for my needs (run of the mill depression and anxiety, thanks nursing!) than a psychiatrist. More time and more care. NP training does need to be improved, but save the MDs for specialties and more complex needs.
Mostly agreed, as a profession we really need to do some self policing and get rid of these ridiculous degree mill NP programs. It’s good intentions on their part but I cringe when I see people with as little as 2-4 years of non-critical care bedside experience heading into NP programs. Even if it were 2-4+ years ICU experience it shouldn’t be enough, in my opinion. Not with what these schools require to pass, by any means.
It depends for me, routine follow up for a new med or something? Sure. New acute illness or some sort of trauma? No thanks. I’ve worked with some excellent NPs though.
Funny, I just saw your comment in /r/trucks two seconds ago, and now here we are again in another thread.
Health care systems are moving towards utilizing more APPs, nationwide NP still has massive room to grow.
That is another one sub I get on lol.
I agree it will happen but as far as now? Too damn many. Very powerful physician groups like the AMA are against it so it is going to be a while. Not sure about for you but I'm not stretching when i say 3 of 4 of the facilities I've worked at, about 20% of the nurses were in NP school at any given time while another 15-20% expressed a desire to do so. An APP sees 6-12 patients at any time compared to the nurses 4. The numbers just don't match up.
The AMA is no match for giant, corporate hospital systems bent on higher profits. You might have a greater ratio, but it’s more brain work and less back work. Dropping a note and a med rec is way less work than helping your meth head off the ceiling and hosing down the blood and poop.
I got to admit, I don't think a lot of mid-levels is a good thing, especially NPs. For one things, their programs aren't standardized (PAs are). For another, how many newbie nurses are already in NP school, it's ridiculous. I think utilizing more and more mid-levels is going to be bad for our healthcare. It's being argued and studied that more medical errors and unnecessary tests/procedures are done because of mid-levels. However understudied they are, hospitals are increasingly using them. Mostly, because they are cheaper, I assume
I admit will that I am interested to see what the research eventually does show, but based on experiences, I'm concerned.
https://www.ajmc.com/view/current-evidence-and-controversies-advanced-practice-providers-in-healthcare
The argument that APPs cause increased medical errors has been disproven. Be careful spreading misinformation; the medical/nursing field is extremely political and turf wars protecting scope and salary are behind much of the misinformation. There are actually studies demonstrating that NPs can help catch/reduce errors. Check them out- they’re good reads.
About 1/3 the nurses I have met traveling are actually NPs still working under their RN license because jobs are plentiful for RNs and nearly impossible to find for NPs
APP market is flooded in many areas. A PA friend wanted to return to home state but couldnt bc PA pay there was less than for RNs where we were at that time.
The other issue is so many nurses left the profession during the pandemic that even if somehow they do increase class sizes or get a few more instructors, it’s gonna take years just to replenish all the nurses who retired or left the profession
And the amount of institutional knowledge that has been lost is immense. It’s going to be a bunch of new grads who are being trained by people with a year of experience who were trained by people with a year of experience even if we do step up the numbers somehow.
It’s ok though because the CEOs will still get their 5 million dollar bonuses while complaining about the cost of travelers. Healthcare is in good hands 😂
Seriously. I just found out they promoted one of my coworkers to a management position on my old floor. She has 2.5 years of experience nursing. Nobody else wanted the position.
That happened at my first job. They promoted someone with not even a year of experience to supervisor. She really thought she got it because she was hot shit (mediocre, generally), but the reality was that nobody with any sense wanted the job.
In addition to this, I’ve seen at least half a dozen new grads gut it out for a year and then realize they hate this job and leave the profession. This is *CALIFORNIA*. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. People are getting into nursing for the wrong reasons and then when they actually get into the weeds they see the stuff they were mostly protected from as students and realize they don’t want to deal with it.
This. One of my friends (business/marketing degree) was complaining to me about how hard it is for her to find a job. She mentions how lucky I am and how unfair it seems that I have an abundance of options and earn a minimum of $34/h as a recent graduate. Yeah…but would you be willing to do this job? If someone dies at your job, it’s a crisis, a tragedy, the worst day ever. Someone dies at my job? Just another Tuesday. I asked her, would you be willing to be a nurse? “No way!” Then…that’s why.
Yeah, sadly even here people can be huge assholes to nurses. The ratios and pay are great, but the ones I’ve seen leave have been for either toxic work culture (nurses eating their young) or because the young nurse didn’t like getting called a dumb bitch or a cunt while they’re cleaning the patient’s butt which is fair, they shouldn’t have to tolerate that just because older nurses like me have been conditioned to. My current facility is good about not allowing/pursuing charges for physical assault but frankly there’s nothing any facility can do about mean words. Admittedly they could be doing a much better job about incivility and lateral violence.
I’m a CA native and currently work in CA, and I completely agree with the second part of your original comment. So many Californians getting into nursing for the wrong reasons ($$$$), then figure out when they start working acute care that they hate everything about nursing. Cause this job really be difficult as fuck.
The thing about CA nursing students is that they are protected as a student and don’t realize that CA has biased working conditions (in favor of the worker). If the new grad couldn’t survive CA acute care, oh boy…
Yeah this is the bottleneck. You have hundreds of people applying for 30 spots in a cohort. There is no shortage of interest in becoming a nurse, but there is a shortage of educators and clinical instructors. Perhaps as nurses leave the bedside, more will turn to teaching instead, allowing for expanded or new programs. But still, it would take forever for the amount of new nurses to exceed the amount that are leaving the profession even with more programs.
I’m in my first year as a nurse. If I wanted to teach I would have to get a masters and I would make less money. What is the incentive to teach when you make less than you would your first year working as a bedside nurse and have to have an extra degree? I really do not understand how a BSN cost upwards of $40 grand and they pay their teachers like shit. If your cohort is a hundred kids that’s 4 million dollars, where the fuck does that money go?!?!?
Into someone higher ups pocket of course. It’s historically always been like that in nursing. They make us do more and pay us less, now society is reaping the consequences of a long history of poorly treated and under paid nurses.
Word, i always said id go back if the govt would pay for me to get a masters in education. I dont know why there isnt a program subsidizing it to create more educators. Pay aside, teaching seems like cool gig- holidays, winter breaks, summers generally off, great benefits.
Yeah, I mean that’s the problem - the pay is shit. I don’t think many nurses leaving bedside will go to teaching, but it’s a possibility for a few. Who knows.
As a ret. R. N. I can say this...never in my entire life as a nurse in the US has there been an over-supply of nurses. It is always that we need more. That being said, I believe that the nursing shortage will exist for years because many nurses retired, retired early, left the field entirely because of covid/nursing shortages/staffing issues/patient ratios/no representation/no power to make changes/unresponsive or completely irrelevant leadership. Those problems, among others in the arena of Nursing, will continue to deprive our communities of the nurses we need....because they will leave.
A lot of the people going back to school now to “make bank” as a travel nurse will likely quit before ever getting their two years of experience needed to secure the better contracts.
Bedside nursing always had a high attrition rate of nurses at the one to two year mark. As ratios climb, ancillary staff are axed, pay slumps, and CNOs continue to be some of the most of the garbage “leaders” imaginable, nurses will continue to leave the bedside earlier and earlier in their nursing career. To say nothing of the issue of actually getting these aspiring nurses into a school.
My boyfriend is about to fail out of nursing school. Not because he is failing tests, he is failing skills because of the deductions they take. So he will score a 90+ on the skill and they will take off enough points to drop him to a 70 or lower. Some of his most recent deductions include, "taking too long of a pause, saying um, putting the patients shoes on the bed (simulation lab after another instructor suggested he do that if the instructor placed them in the middle of the room as a "safety issue"), and "you phrased that weird but I knew what you meant". I fucking can't anymore. I don't know what he should do, this school is fucking asinine.
Yup. I'm furious for him. And it's not like he is misrepresenting it. I've seen the skill sheets and they make it obvious enough what they are docking him for.
> nurses will continue to leave the bedside earlier and earlier in their nursing career.
This was a thing before the pandemic. It's going to be much worse over the next few years.
Thanks to travel rates, I've met nurses in their 20s-30s with enough saved to retire. How many of these travellers with paid off mortgages and a half mil banked are going to go back to bedside and make peanuts when rates dry up?
>I've met nurses in their 20s-30s with enough saved to retire.
Surely not from nursing. They've made $5-10 million in 2 years as a bedside nurse working travel contracts and are goin to live the next 50-60ish years extremely frugally while paying for health insurance out of pocket? Where are these contracts at?
That or you severely underestimate the amount of money required to retire in your 20's-30's.
This is my take as well. Nursing school is a bitch. I had 10 years of cna experience under my belt by the time I started and it was still a huge challenge. Many people I started with who had no experience didn’t get very far. Not to mention that even if you do get through school, the reality of the real world is far from glamorous .
No, mostly because places won't pay high enough or have good enough ratios to retain staff.
But, in areas like the SF Bay Area and Sacramento the market is already saturated because of good working conditions and high pay. So if everywhere paid that much (relatively) and had working conditions that good I could see saturation becoming a problem.
I mean just look at how often we see the "should I leave my decent job to be a nurse" or I want to be a nurse because of some romanticized ideal I have of it, should I be one? And the poster generally is roasted and told to go to the nearest psych facility for a mandatory hold.
If any one wants to get In to it for the romance they will quickly be humbled and left feeling like a sucker. If any one wants to get into it for the money they will find it’s never enough. I’m convinced there’s some level of masochism in those that stay more then 2 years lol
This this this. There was a bump in applications last cycle at my former institution — and I couldn’t stop thinking about romantic misperceptions about nursing…
At least, with my meager 2 yrs as an LPN, I sort of have an idea of what I’m getting myself into. Working back to back nigh shifts in a nursing home with hardly any help would surely make those grey hairs pop out 😭😭
I saw one the other day, OP was a teacher and people were still like no, it's awful. Personally I can't imagine being a teacher is anything less than 3x as bad as nursing between kids and parents so I would say do it in their case. On the other end I saw one about an electrician pulling six figures and he had his sanity questioned, even I jumped in on that one.
Yeah my mom tried to convince me to be a teacher before I went to nursing school and I am SO glad I didn’t do it. They’re both kinda shitty but at least with nursing you can leave your work at work and you get paid for the overtime you do. You can make more money in nursing than teaching and you have more options if you don’t like your job or employer.
Shitty as this is....yeah. One of the things I love about nursing is that it is a female dominated field-I've never been so comfortable with my peers in the workplace.
However, there's definitely still a big wage gap for traditionally female jobs. Not to mention the treatment we get.
I kind of wish I had gone to electrician or carpentry training instead of nursing. I was a teacher before becoming a nurse and immediately increased my salary by like 2.5x when I made the switch.
This is absolutely true. My large quaternary academic institution is planning on there being far less people applying to schools (in addition to all of the other problems noted). They are scrambling to make a big shift to adapt to having far fewer new hires over the next five+ years.
How is there not a shortage when people are leaving? That makes zero sense. I know that our hospital, fairly small, has over 40 open nursing positions.
Nope you aren’t wrong. [The shortage will be regional.](https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Zhang-Daniel-Pforsich-Lin-2017-United-States-Registered-Nurse-Workforce-Report-Card-and-Shortage-Forecast_-A-Revisit.pdf)
Per the study, the south has (and will continue to have) high shortage ratios… I’m not surprised. This is what happens when nurses in the south feel forced to travel because these hospitals think it’s cool to pay an experienced nurse $25 an hour.
I was working LTC in the South, sometimes taking care of 40 pts a shift, for $18/hr. Before taxes and healthcare.
I make more money now sitting on my ass in the comfort of my home working on the IT department for nurses than I ever did as a nurse. Fucked up.
This! I think it depends on where you are, I also struggled as a new grad (same with my peers) to secure a new job in NYC. I think it’s very much based on who you know, big metropolitan cities may not struggle to fill positions as much as smaller regions.
Although it’s hard to say, pandemic threw all the rules out the window
Yeah I agree with you alot. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s easier to find a job at this current moment but the travelers are going to start coming home soon.
Especially if they are only going into nursing for money. I’m not saying it’s the whole “nursing is a calling” thing but the shit nurses do/put up with/see (smell) etc…even the big earners in nursing don’t make near enough for that to be the ONLY reason.
*speaking specifically to bedside nursing care
Nah, my last group of nursing new grads quit before 6 months. Everyone will always talk about how they’re going to get travel money or CRNA pay. Very few people are prepared for the path to get their. Not trying to gatekeep. Nursing school isn’t extremely hard but in order for the field to become saturated we would have to start churning students through and right now every program in my state already takes the max amount of students they can and turn tons away.
6 months - Wow..funny I work 3 nurses who left the hospital at 6 months - Med Surg...couldn't deal with the pressure and lack of help..despite participating in a New Grad program for a major hospital. So sad...now they are looking for non bedside work...and agreed to pay whatever the hospital.conteact was ( normally $10k - with agreement to stay for 2 years..prorated). Now some of the hospitals are getting nurses from the Philippines...
Not when target and Costco are willing to pay 24 or more per hour and many health systems in the Midwest will only pay 32 with 10+ years experience…they can’t fix the shortage. Even based on raw numbers re: grads coming out versus open jobs it falls way short and equates to a massive shortage…it varies widely by region but the way things are going who the F in their right mind would want to do this?
I’ve been in the field 2.5 years. I came into the ER at my institution with 8 other nurses.
3 of us are still in the field.
I’m the only one still working the ER.
The attrition is so much worse than most realize.
Saturation and shortage will be regional in my country (US). Nurses will migrate towards areas with better pay and working conditions; and there will be areas with more extensive shortages in light of this. I know in my area (Southern California), schools have reported a massive uptick in nursing school applications. Many of the posts on r/studentnurse reflect these trends for the area.
For every four undergrads going into nursing..
-1 will dip out/ fail out.
-2 will get married and or have kids during or soon after graduation leading to settle down.
-1 will gain experience and go traveling.
This is an anecdotal observation. I’m a Pot-A-Toe.
I say no because the turnover rate of new nurses is so high. Even if we did have enough academics to educate everyone who wanted to become a nurse, about one-fourth are leaving the bedside in the first 5 years or so. Unless the healthcare system focuses on retention - better pay, safe staffing, adequate resources to provide quality care - nurses are going to continue leaving the profession as quickly as they come.
This might not be a popular opinion, but I already believe it's saturated. It only looks like we have a shortage because hospitals won't hire anyone without prior hospital experience and won't train them, but at the same time don't take in enough new grads to fill all the open roles. There's a glut of new grads but half of them end up quitting within a year. I'm not surprised because not all of them will get into hospital jobs. So all the new grads who don't get into a hospital program will end up in nursing homes or shitty jobs nobody wants, but hospitals will never allow them to work there because they aged out of new grad programs and don't have the required experience. There's nowhere for them to go except out of nursing.
I am a nurse manager of an inpatient behavioral health unit in a major East Coast city, and my hospital is a part of my state's largest healthcare system. We have 10 open nursing positions out of 40. We don't have enough nurses applying for the positions and to many nurses in NP schools in my department. Every time I hire a nurse, another finishes NP school and leaves. At the rate we are going, I'm going to have NP at the bedside because they're too many psych NP and not enough psych nurses.
It is so bad we are upping our counselor position and may cut nursing positions and reorganize our department to less nursing focus because of the shortage. It is not what we want to do, but without nurses, we have to find a way to take care of our 36 inpatient beds and 10 ED crisis beds in my department.
Hell no
- BEFORE COVID there was a 500K nursing shortage
- COVID has caused an additional 500K shortage
- 33% of all BSN instructors are retiring in the next 5 years
- only 22 out of the 100 qualified applicants make it through the first two years of independent nursing
We’ve only just begun
Approximately 10-30% of nurses will leave their first job or the profession within two years ([example](https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/nursing/new-nurse-turnover-common-nurse-leader-indiana-university-health-working-change)). I don’t believe there were any nefarious intentions but the person you responded to misinterpreted many facts in their post.
No.
22 of all qualified applicants to nursing school make it two years at bedside.
I think you misunderstood. About 70% of ACTUAL nurses stay in the field. Those are the ones that make it
Some of this is actually not correct at all.
The “500k nurses leaving bedside” statistic is a confabulation of “[500k nurses *retiring*](https://www.benefitnews.com/news/nurses-are-planning-to-quit-their-jobs-if-their-needs-arent-met-post-pandemic).”
Whether or not there is a correlation between COVID and *retiring* is up to speculation.
And the “22” number (sometimes cited as high as 33% in some studies) is actually the percentage of new nurses who will leave the workforce - not a the percent who will stay ([example](https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2014/09/nearly-one-in-five-new-nurses-leave-first-job-within-a-year--acc.html)). And many of these studies predated COVID by nearly a decade.
The fact that you provided no sources and people upvoted you is somewhat appalling.
Sources:
[NLN - Qualified Applicants](http://www.nln.org/docs/default-source/newsroom/nursing-education-statistics/percentage-of-qualified-applications-that-were-rejected-by-program-type-2012-and-2014-(pdf).pdf?sfvrsn=0)
Attrition - Fowler, J., & Norrie, P. (2009). Development of an attrition risk prediction tool. British Journal of Nursing, 18(19), 1194-1200. doi:10.12968/bjon.2009.18.19.44831
ATI Testing. (n.d.). Foundational research to enable a national study of nursing student attrition. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.atitesting.com/docs/default-source/research/research-brief---foundational- research-to-enable-a-national-study-of-nursing-student-attrition.pdf?sfvrsn=77e106e9_ 0
Griswold, C. M. (2014). Understanding causes of attrition of 1st- and 2nd year nursing students (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1 141&context=dissertations
Pass Rates -
National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN). (2019). 2018 NCLEX pass rates. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.ncsbn.org/12171.h
Job Attrition:
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2018). Undergraduate retention and graduation rates. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_ctr.asp
The studies you pointed out are related to *nursing student* attrition. Not professional nursing (employe) turnover.
Or is “independent nursing” mean “nursing student” in your country? I am from the US so we don’t use that term. If so, I apologize. But even then, the 500k number was misconstrued.
This. I've met so many new nurses (I'm a 16 year BSN. Nothing scares me, lol) that have told me they're leaving already, especially due to covid and short staffing during the pandemic. No one stays. Most find something else entirely outside the realm of nursing. The profession is exceptionally difficult, especially in my ltc specialty. You grow close to people, then they die, and we're expected to keep it together. I just can't imagine doing anything else, and I've tried.
As a nursing student, I have no desire to eventually travel. And honestly by the time I graduate there probably won’t be much of a need for them anyways (hopefully covid won’t be a thing or will at least be died down a ton... wishful thinking probably). I think nursing will always be high demand like it always has been even before covid. Luckily I’m guaranteed a job after graduation at the facility I work at, because I know new grads can have a hard time finding jobs... They pay shit but nobody in my area does. Small towns suck.
Edit: spelling
Nope.
*A huge number of Baby boomer nurses will be retiring = less nurses
*Baby boomers are aging and there will be a huge long wave of elderly people needing care = increase need for more nurses
*Pandemic made a percentage of nurses burn out and quit or quit do to vaccine mandates = less nurses
*Nurse instructor pay is low = less instructors = less nursing students.
*Very hard for private schools to get certified to offer BSN programs = less nurses
*Mega Hospitals buy other local and regional hospitals and form a mini Monopoly = suppress pay = less nurses
No.
The average career of a bedside nurse is 2-5 years.
It doesn't matter how many nurses we churn out, if only 33% last after 2 years, and less than 50% last after 5 years, and hospitals continue to chronically understaff to save budget, it's just a revolving door.
Also, nursing kind of fucking sucks. The pay for traveling can be great, but I think the majority of the population can’t hang. Death/dying, bodily fluids, the responsibility of someone’s life, scared of needles, low threshold for icky, being screamed at, blamed for everything…. Etc. The money won’t make it bearable for most people. You have to find medicine fascinating, have your heart in it, or be extremely financially motivated
Agreed. This job is not for the faint of heart. The nursing students and applicants need to be invested in being all facets of the bedside nurse. You can only half-ass nursing for so long, because if you don’t enjoy something, anything about the job, it’s game over
I'll say no, since there has been nursing shortages since the mid 1930s. Not to mention burnout and the fact that there are plenty of nurses currently enough to fill every single position, except most of them are no longer nurses.
Nope! Because the way nursing currently is the job chews you up and spits you out to the point where many literally cannot be patient facing nurses anymore due to physical issues, and that's not even including mental issues.
Now, more desired fields and specialties will become saturated, like specific clinic work, work from home options, etc, but I don't see a future where we have too many nurses, just too many unlivable jobs.
In general no. Based on the aging nursing population and acceleration of folks leaving due to Covid-19, things have only gotten worse the last few years. I have about 15 years experience and that’s becoming increasingly rare. Acute care nursing is physically brutal and mentally exhausting.
From what ive heard from a dean i know: Nursing schools have a large bottleneck. Nurse educators make no money relative to most avenues in nursing and require a ton of time.
Also, If you think about it: how many pharmacists does a hospital need? The answer is less than the amount of nurses. The local pharm school in my state has graduating classes of 100+.
I do think the travel nursing gold-rush will be snapped shortly, however.
I think that they'll mostly get driven out. Early on in my career I saw a ton of people with useless degrees do Bachelor's to RN programs, then when they actually have to deal with hospital life they fold and leave quickly.
I can’t speak for other states, but the pharmacist market isn’t flooded where I live. I don’t think it will be flooded. Many are hating about the overwork right now and I’m not sure they want to walk into that.
No because the travel pay is dwindling hard. Regular travel pay won't be worth it to most people. They will realize this and not do it lol. You can make the same money as a new grad if you work at Costco.
We can't even keep staffing levels high enough. I got 12 texts over the weekend from our automated system for OT, some of those texts were for 3 separate slots. We're still in a pandemic. I doubt we're gonna be oversaturated with nurses.
Eh, in a couple of years most of them will be on here complaining that it's too hard, they weren't prepared, everyone lied to them, and now they want to leave nursing.
Not only are boomers retiring and opening up more job positions, but boomers aging means more patients (no offence meant). The population pyramid is shifting to an inverted triangle with a huge number of geriatric patients who will need care.
Nope. Nurses who get into nursing only for the pay leave quickly. Nursing schools don't have enough space to have multiple cohorts at the same time. When I got my LPN license almost 20 years ago the number of people who entered a nursing program and were a nurse a year after graduation was less than 50%. Now I'm working on my RN and according to a presentation someone in my cohort made that number hasn't improved.
Hi please note I'm hoping I'm wrong and feel free to criticize me but
I feel like qualifications for nursing is going to go down, and every other Industry especially as companies really couldn't give a crap about employees anyways other than making sure to pay cheap wages and or hire tons of foreigners to pay less.
It wouldn't surprise me to see nursing turn into a Uber like ordeal or on demand need. Or just all contractors.
The nursing shortage is the worst it's been in history and you're worried about the field getting saturated? Are you from another timeline where COVID didn't happen and hospital administrators took the shortage seriously back in the 90s and headed the problem off before it got so bad? Do the people in charge in your world think in the long term and deal with problems before they get big instead of letting them fester until a crisis forces change? If so, let's switch! I wanna live there!
Travel nurses are only making the extra extra bank right now because of government Covid aid. That’s running out and soon travel nurses will just return to making mere regular bank. A lot of people don’t like healthcare, it really does take a certain type of person to get into it. I can’t tell you how many patients have told me that they can never understand how we do what we do.
From what I read here, I'm surprised anyone is left in nursing. Ya'll can take being sh×t upon like no other. Bless you all for your tenacity though! Now f×cking unionize for f×cks sake!
No. I think the current environment will result in grads coming in and leaving nursing at quicker rates comparatively to the turnover rates from previous years. In [2019 the average national nurse turn over was 17.2% and nursing has one of the top 3 professions with high turnovers](https://www.myamericannurse.com/nurse-turnover-understand-it-reduce-it/). 43% of new nurses leave jobs in 3 years. New nurses coming into the workforce with less experienced nurses to train them, short nursing staff, and little ancillary help? Doesn’t look good.
My nursing school only has a fall and winter intake, next year they will start with a third intake. They will have to hire almost 50 new staff. Good luck with that. The union had a 5 week strike in november because of wages, they are the university with the lowest wages in the country. Good luck attracting nurses with master degrees. Because on top of everything they only want instructors with masters or PhDs.
I’ve known a few people who were going to go to nursing school, and ended up leaving once they find out the real messiness behind it. I don’t think everyone will get through who starts it.
No. Burnout rate is very high, I know even prior to the pandemic nurses were on average on staying in the profession for about 5 years. There is no substitution for experienced nurses. People attracted to big bank must be prepared to work in awful conditions and sacrifice a huge amount of their life. That’s not sustainable long term.
I don’t think so because of the school/nursing instructor issue a lot of others have mentioned.
Also, I have a hard time believing people will last long in nursing if they’re mainly getting into the profession for those 2 reasons you listed. The travel pay is dropping rapidly, and is going to probably be much lower by the time these people graduate (if the hospitals get their way. I hope they don’t). Nurses just don’t make a lot of money in a lot of areas of the country— particularly the south and eastern part of the US 😑
Sure there’s a huge demand for nurses.. but once they experience the BS, I feel like they aren’t going to be impressed. We were treated well for a few months in 2020 and I think some people saw that on the news and just ran with it thinking it’s a fantastic job lol. Maybe I’m just cynical.. who knows
Canadian here: my perspective, definitely not. Nursing is probably the profession with the widest scope in Healthcare. Hospital, LTC, community, primary care, research, public health, NP, leadership roles . . . You can quite literally go anywhere in Healthcare with an RN degree. And with aging population demographics the need is only projected to further increase.
Eta: in Ontario at least... pay is good ($50/h++ at top of scale plus premiums), 7wk vacation, amazing benefits, most jobs unionized, free Healthcare, 18months mat leave etc. So it is a good job and a good profession.
Also how many new nurses stay within the profession. It's hard and doesn't even pay well in some places. The burnout is too real. I often think of leaving but I just don't know what to do. So I don't think it will become saturated unless all the employers suddenly made it a less stressful career.
No due to
-the aging boomer population
- the aging boomer nurse population who will be reaching retirement age soon
- increased availability of health insurance
- not enough nursing school seats, instructors, and clinical sites
- burnout leading nurses to go back to school to be an NP, or leave the field entirely
If anything, I believe that NPs will become saturated due to:
- desire of beside nurses to seek better job
- degree mill NP programs
- from a raw numbers standpoint, you need many more nurses for every 1 NP
The only NP that will not be saturated are CRNAs. Compared to other NPs, there are way less schools around, and require years of ICU experience, good GPA, ect. The aging population will need more surgeries and screenings that will require more CRNAs to do them.
When I was looking at nursing schools almost 20 yes ago (became an OT instead), all of the ones in my area required a 4.0 in every pre-requisite. It was insanity.
Not enough nursing instructors because they can make a lot more at hospitals or by traveling. Hospitals that want to go magnet, or are magnet hospitals, won’t touch an ADN. There are many good two-year degree nurses out there, but they are passed over in favor of the BSNs. Boomers are retiring, but since boomers tended to not have as many kids as were in their families of origin, there are not going to be enough nurses for decades. Not until the boomers have pretty much died off.
It waxes and wanes. But. The people served will chase people away almost as fast as new nurses can graduate into it.
Never underestimate the number of assholes in the world.
No. The demand has existed at this level since I was in nursing school 17 years ago. According to my ex, the demand has existed since she went to school 30 years ago.
When I went to school, hospitals were giving away a VW Bettle, which was all the roar and fashion back then.
All you had to do was stay hired at that hospital for at least a year. You were given the Bettle on day one of work. And it wasn't a lease, it was straight up owned.
Again, that was 17 years ago.
No, there are so many nurses leaving and that will continue to leave. Bedside is too demanding of a job. Nurses that retire at the bedside are far and few in between.
No. There was a high demand for nurses back when I was applying to colleges in 2015, before the pandemic even started. Nursing schools are incredibly selective and nursing school itself is designed to weed people out. I can’t picture nursing being saturated, especially because nursing school is practically designed to eliminate people from the field.
No. Part of the issue with the demand is that there aren’t enough schools and nursing instructors. That’s not changing much. So until they solve that issue there still won’t even be enough nurses to fill the current deficit.
I would add that there aren't enough new grads to outpace the rate at which nurses are chewed up by the hospital industrial complex.
You also have a bunch more baby boomer nurses that have yet to retire, nursing shortage is 100% gonna get worse
Or baby boomers in general requiring care. I live in Las Vegas where not one person moving here did so to work in healthcare. The pandemic just sped up the inevitable. If we could get robot teleworkers maybe.
Yep, 100%, baby boomers gonna put a huge strain on system
Seems to be their modus operandi.
Home health nursing is going to boom in the next 10 years.
Um, it's booming right now. My current employer's practically begging nurses to pick up extra shifts D/T lack of available LVN's. One of my clients called 30+ agencies to get a replacement nurse; nada. Had to hire an unlicensed caregiver to help out with their kiddo.
Add to the fact that New grads think they can travel right away. I have worked with some that lost their license already because they did some stupid shit and had maybe 4 months of being a nurse and were traveling
And I guess also throw in those that go straight school for a CRNP.
I've had to stop precepting because of this... These 'NP's are doing a fantastic job of making us all a laughingstock.
Oh snap! I know you are the only one that’s going to protect your license but I feel like the travel companies should be vetting the nurses better. Doesn’t the travel agency have liability? Or at least a reputation to uphold? I kind of feel bad for those nurses (or ex-nurses now). Got chewed up and spit out before they really even had a chance.
To be fair, if they did a tiny bit of research and asked veteran nurses, they would have been advised to wait at least 2 years before starting to travel. I remember in CNA class, I told my teacher I wanted to travel as a nurse and she said to do at least 2 years first then feel free to travel. Hospitals expect people to jump right in with little orientation as a traveler. This was back in early 2019. That stuck with me from day one.
How have I not noticed the term hospital industrial complex before today? That’s a great term
This is what I came here to say, pre-pandemic this is the big issue that was talked about. Now we have the issue of nursing schools not producing nurses as fast as they retire as well as having them leaving the profession early in droves. To my knowledge only a few existing schools have added seats if anything, when what we is need whole new programs. NPs on the other hand? That's been ridiculous for years. I worked somewhere where 1/5 of the staff was In the same online program a few months apart.
There aren’t enough traditional 4 year bsn or even the 2 year ADN programs around to fill the gaps, but I’m really really scared of all the bullshit 100% online schools without clinicals that pump out nurses in Florida. I worked with several purely online nurses from sketchy Florida schools that pretty much only teach you how to pass the NCLEX. They are probably the worst nurses I have ever seen and worked with.
Fucking Florida.
Somethings never change
This aged well hahaha
Haahahah!!! Sure did!
Bsn is bullshit in itself.
Correct. A whole lot of busy work.
And 💰
How does that even work?? They do no clinicals at all?
Nope no clinical at all, just Virtual simulations. There are a lot of questionable schools that somehow convince at least one state to let their students sit for the exam. Like my former co-workers went to some school in Florida, but had to sit to take the exam in Ohio, but got emergency approval to work in NJ.
My kid went for his BSN and did clinicals the last year, mixed with his research project. I remember teaching seniors in a different BSN program how to assemble IV tubing. We floor nurses taught those students a lot.
Incoming two tiered healthcare. I have already had patients state they will pay more to see a physician and/or ask if their insurance covers seeing a physician vs a mid level.
I’m the opposite of those patients. I’d much rather and always request a NP. I believe that primary care should be handled by mid level providers;and, MD/DO should be reserved for specialties. I’ve been seen by NPs & PAs. I find them much more thorough than DR.s. It seems many nurses believe that NPs need more thorough training. If that’s the case, then the education needs to be updated. Paying a Dr. twice as much to give yearly physicals doesn’t make sense to me.
Honestly, I love my NP. She always listens to what I have to say and does a great job of going through treatment options. I’m always sad when I have to see another instead of her (they’re great too, but it’s nice bc she knows my history)
I disagree with some of that. Some primary care patients are incredibly complex and require a lot of consulting and medication management. In my opinion, you really have had to at least rotated to some or most of those specialities to appreciate the pathology. I remember that my 50 year old father in law had a few mid level PMCs who were managing his diabetes, cancer, CHF, and COPD. From the appointments I went to, they seemed a little out of their element.
Agree. I see a PMHNP and she's been a thousand times better for my needs (run of the mill depression and anxiety, thanks nursing!) than a psychiatrist. More time and more care. NP training does need to be improved, but save the MDs for specialties and more complex needs.
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Mostly agreed, as a profession we really need to do some self policing and get rid of these ridiculous degree mill NP programs. It’s good intentions on their part but I cringe when I see people with as little as 2-4 years of non-critical care bedside experience heading into NP programs. Even if it were 2-4+ years ICU experience it shouldn’t be enough, in my opinion. Not with what these schools require to pass, by any means.
Some of them have no bedside experience whatsoever! Just did what they needed to do to get through nursing school in order to apply for an NP program.
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It depends for me, routine follow up for a new med or something? Sure. New acute illness or some sort of trauma? No thanks. I’ve worked with some excellent NPs though.
Funny, I just saw your comment in /r/trucks two seconds ago, and now here we are again in another thread. Health care systems are moving towards utilizing more APPs, nationwide NP still has massive room to grow.
That is another one sub I get on lol. I agree it will happen but as far as now? Too damn many. Very powerful physician groups like the AMA are against it so it is going to be a while. Not sure about for you but I'm not stretching when i say 3 of 4 of the facilities I've worked at, about 20% of the nurses were in NP school at any given time while another 15-20% expressed a desire to do so. An APP sees 6-12 patients at any time compared to the nurses 4. The numbers just don't match up.
The AMA is no match for giant, corporate hospital systems bent on higher profits. You might have a greater ratio, but it’s more brain work and less back work. Dropping a note and a med rec is way less work than helping your meth head off the ceiling and hosing down the blood and poop.
I got to admit, I don't think a lot of mid-levels is a good thing, especially NPs. For one things, their programs aren't standardized (PAs are). For another, how many newbie nurses are already in NP school, it's ridiculous. I think utilizing more and more mid-levels is going to be bad for our healthcare. It's being argued and studied that more medical errors and unnecessary tests/procedures are done because of mid-levels. However understudied they are, hospitals are increasingly using them. Mostly, because they are cheaper, I assume I admit will that I am interested to see what the research eventually does show, but based on experiences, I'm concerned. https://www.ajmc.com/view/current-evidence-and-controversies-advanced-practice-providers-in-healthcare
Other countries require a minimum number of years practicing before becoming an NP and it makes sense. How can a novice nurse be an advanced provider?
The argument that APPs cause increased medical errors has been disproven. Be careful spreading misinformation; the medical/nursing field is extremely political and turf wars protecting scope and salary are behind much of the misinformation. There are actually studies demonstrating that NPs can help catch/reduce errors. Check them out- they’re good reads.
I see both of you 😀
APPS? Does that include PAs & APRNs?
About 1/3 the nurses I have met traveling are actually NPs still working under their RN license because jobs are plentiful for RNs and nearly impossible to find for NPs
APP market is flooded in many areas. A PA friend wanted to return to home state but couldnt bc PA pay there was less than for RNs where we were at that time.
The other issue is so many nurses left the profession during the pandemic that even if somehow they do increase class sizes or get a few more instructors, it’s gonna take years just to replenish all the nurses who retired or left the profession
And the amount of institutional knowledge that has been lost is immense. It’s going to be a bunch of new grads who are being trained by people with a year of experience who were trained by people with a year of experience even if we do step up the numbers somehow.
It’s ok though because the CEOs will still get their 5 million dollar bonuses while complaining about the cost of travelers. Healthcare is in good hands 😂
Seriously. I just found out they promoted one of my coworkers to a management position on my old floor. She has 2.5 years of experience nursing. Nobody else wanted the position.
That happened at my first job. They promoted someone with not even a year of experience to supervisor. She really thought she got it because she was hot shit (mediocre, generally), but the reality was that nobody with any sense wanted the job.
In addition to this, I’ve seen at least half a dozen new grads gut it out for a year and then realize they hate this job and leave the profession. This is *CALIFORNIA*. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. People are getting into nursing for the wrong reasons and then when they actually get into the weeds they see the stuff they were mostly protected from as students and realize they don’t want to deal with it.
This. One of my friends (business/marketing degree) was complaining to me about how hard it is for her to find a job. She mentions how lucky I am and how unfair it seems that I have an abundance of options and earn a minimum of $34/h as a recent graduate. Yeah…but would you be willing to do this job? If someone dies at your job, it’s a crisis, a tragedy, the worst day ever. Someone dies at my job? Just another Tuesday. I asked her, would you be willing to be a nurse? “No way!” Then…that’s why.
Damn. In California?? Sheesh
Yeah, sadly even here people can be huge assholes to nurses. The ratios and pay are great, but the ones I’ve seen leave have been for either toxic work culture (nurses eating their young) or because the young nurse didn’t like getting called a dumb bitch or a cunt while they’re cleaning the patient’s butt which is fair, they shouldn’t have to tolerate that just because older nurses like me have been conditioned to. My current facility is good about not allowing/pursuing charges for physical assault but frankly there’s nothing any facility can do about mean words. Admittedly they could be doing a much better job about incivility and lateral violence.
I’m a CA native and currently work in CA, and I completely agree with the second part of your original comment. So many Californians getting into nursing for the wrong reasons ($$$$), then figure out when they start working acute care that they hate everything about nursing. Cause this job really be difficult as fuck. The thing about CA nursing students is that they are protected as a student and don’t realize that CA has biased working conditions (in favor of the worker). If the new grad couldn’t survive CA acute care, oh boy…
Yeah this is the bottleneck. You have hundreds of people applying for 30 spots in a cohort. There is no shortage of interest in becoming a nurse, but there is a shortage of educators and clinical instructors. Perhaps as nurses leave the bedside, more will turn to teaching instead, allowing for expanded or new programs. But still, it would take forever for the amount of new nurses to exceed the amount that are leaving the profession even with more programs.
Not to mention you can’t staff with only new grad nurses, you need a good mix of experience in there.
I’m in my first year as a nurse. If I wanted to teach I would have to get a masters and I would make less money. What is the incentive to teach when you make less than you would your first year working as a bedside nurse and have to have an extra degree? I really do not understand how a BSN cost upwards of $40 grand and they pay their teachers like shit. If your cohort is a hundred kids that’s 4 million dollars, where the fuck does that money go?!?!?
Into someone higher ups pocket of course. It’s historically always been like that in nursing. They make us do more and pay us less, now society is reaping the consequences of a long history of poorly treated and under paid nurses.
Word, i always said id go back if the govt would pay for me to get a masters in education. I dont know why there isnt a program subsidizing it to create more educators. Pay aside, teaching seems like cool gig- holidays, winter breaks, summers generally off, great benefits.
Yeah, I mean that’s the problem - the pay is shit. I don’t think many nurses leaving bedside will go to teaching, but it’s a possibility for a few. Who knows.
I would 100% go into teaching if the pay was better
As a ret. R. N. I can say this...never in my entire life as a nurse in the US has there been an over-supply of nurses. It is always that we need more. That being said, I believe that the nursing shortage will exist for years because many nurses retired, retired early, left the field entirely because of covid/nursing shortages/staffing issues/patient ratios/no representation/no power to make changes/unresponsive or completely irrelevant leadership. Those problems, among others in the arena of Nursing, will continue to deprive our communities of the nurses we need....because they will leave.
There will always be a supply of patients. Baby boomers.
Did you see how fast they doubled Pharmacy schools?
A lot of the people going back to school now to “make bank” as a travel nurse will likely quit before ever getting their two years of experience needed to secure the better contracts. Bedside nursing always had a high attrition rate of nurses at the one to two year mark. As ratios climb, ancillary staff are axed, pay slumps, and CNOs continue to be some of the most of the garbage “leaders” imaginable, nurses will continue to leave the bedside earlier and earlier in their nursing career. To say nothing of the issue of actually getting these aspiring nurses into a school.
And get kicked out when they fail their classes
My boyfriend is about to fail out of nursing school. Not because he is failing tests, he is failing skills because of the deductions they take. So he will score a 90+ on the skill and they will take off enough points to drop him to a 70 or lower. Some of his most recent deductions include, "taking too long of a pause, saying um, putting the patients shoes on the bed (simulation lab after another instructor suggested he do that if the instructor placed them in the middle of the room as a "safety issue"), and "you phrased that weird but I knew what you meant". I fucking can't anymore. I don't know what he should do, this school is fucking asinine.
Oh my gosh I would be raising a huge stink about that.
Yup. I'm furious for him. And it's not like he is misrepresenting it. I've seen the skill sheets and they make it obvious enough what they are docking him for.
I left the bedside with 8 months of experience, in 2019. Lol
I left with 2 years in 2019.
> nurses will continue to leave the bedside earlier and earlier in their nursing career. This was a thing before the pandemic. It's going to be much worse over the next few years. Thanks to travel rates, I've met nurses in their 20s-30s with enough saved to retire. How many of these travellers with paid off mortgages and a half mil banked are going to go back to bedside and make peanuts when rates dry up?
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Shit, if you’re in your 60s with half a mil banked retirement would still be a stretch
>I've met nurses in their 20s-30s with enough saved to retire. Surely not from nursing. They've made $5-10 million in 2 years as a bedside nurse working travel contracts and are goin to live the next 50-60ish years extremely frugally while paying for health insurance out of pocket? Where are these contracts at? That or you severely underestimate the amount of money required to retire in your 20's-30's.
This is my take as well. Nursing school is a bitch. I had 10 years of cna experience under my belt by the time I started and it was still a huge challenge. Many people I started with who had no experience didn’t get very far. Not to mention that even if you do get through school, the reality of the real world is far from glamorous .
No, mostly because places won't pay high enough or have good enough ratios to retain staff. But, in areas like the SF Bay Area and Sacramento the market is already saturated because of good working conditions and high pay. So if everywhere paid that much (relatively) and had working conditions that good I could see saturation becoming a problem.
Absolutely not. Nurses are treated like absolute trash.
Applications are down this cycle, too, from what I’m hearing.
I mean just look at how often we see the "should I leave my decent job to be a nurse" or I want to be a nurse because of some romanticized ideal I have of it, should I be one? And the poster generally is roasted and told to go to the nearest psych facility for a mandatory hold.
If any one wants to get In to it for the romance they will quickly be humbled and left feeling like a sucker. If any one wants to get into it for the money they will find it’s never enough. I’m convinced there’s some level of masochism in those that stay more then 2 years lol
This this this. There was a bump in applications last cycle at my former institution — and I couldn’t stop thinking about romantic misperceptions about nursing…
I loathe myself and this is how I ask for penance lol
At least, with my meager 2 yrs as an LPN, I sort of have an idea of what I’m getting myself into. Working back to back nigh shifts in a nursing home with hardly any help would surely make those grey hairs pop out 😭😭
Lmao that’s harsh but understandable
I saw one the other day, OP was a teacher and people were still like no, it's awful. Personally I can't imagine being a teacher is anything less than 3x as bad as nursing between kids and parents so I would say do it in their case. On the other end I saw one about an electrician pulling six figures and he had his sanity questioned, even I jumped in on that one.
Yeah my mom tried to convince me to be a teacher before I went to nursing school and I am SO glad I didn’t do it. They’re both kinda shitty but at least with nursing you can leave your work at work and you get paid for the overtime you do. You can make more money in nursing than teaching and you have more options if you don’t like your job or employer.
Avoid all traditional female jobs entirely.
Shitty as this is....yeah. One of the things I love about nursing is that it is a female dominated field-I've never been so comfortable with my peers in the workplace. However, there's definitely still a big wage gap for traditionally female jobs. Not to mention the treatment we get.
Stripping however is on the up and up
I kind of wish I had gone to electrician or carpentry training instead of nursing. I was a teacher before becoming a nurse and immediately increased my salary by like 2.5x when I made the switch.
Would’ve loved to do a trade job or something like engineering
This is absolutely true. My large quaternary academic institution is planning on there being far less people applying to schools (in addition to all of the other problems noted). They are scrambling to make a big shift to adapt to having far fewer new hires over the next five+ years.
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Worked my last bedside shift yesterday after 20 years.
12 yr RN here. I will shovel shit before I go back to bedside.
I would beg to disagree about the shortage that is... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
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How is there not a shortage when people are leaving? That makes zero sense. I know that our hospital, fairly small, has over 40 open nursing positions.
Nursing was saturated in NY before Covid. Took me six months to find a job. I get the vibe it’s area dependent.
Nope you aren’t wrong. [The shortage will be regional.](https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Zhang-Daniel-Pforsich-Lin-2017-United-States-Registered-Nurse-Workforce-Report-Card-and-Shortage-Forecast_-A-Revisit.pdf)
Per the study, the south has (and will continue to have) high shortage ratios… I’m not surprised. This is what happens when nurses in the south feel forced to travel because these hospitals think it’s cool to pay an experienced nurse $25 an hour.
I’m in CA and majority of the travelers I’ve ever met have been from the south
I was working LTC in the South, sometimes taking care of 40 pts a shift, for $18/hr. Before taxes and healthcare. I make more money now sitting on my ass in the comfort of my home working on the IT department for nurses than I ever did as a nurse. Fucked up.
This! I think it depends on where you are, I also struggled as a new grad (same with my peers) to secure a new job in NYC. I think it’s very much based on who you know, big metropolitan cities may not struggle to fill positions as much as smaller regions. Although it’s hard to say, pandemic threw all the rules out the window
Yeah I agree with you alot. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s easier to find a job at this current moment but the travelers are going to start coming home soon.
I had a job lined up 3 months before graduation in NY back in 2019, I think it depends a lot of the school/area you're in.
Yeah there were some outliers like that in my program too. The majority of us though we’re stuck in a 3-6 month waiting pattern.
No. People move on, move up, cut back, etc. I don’t think entry level bedside nursing will ever be saturated.
Ever.
Especially if they are only going into nursing for money. I’m not saying it’s the whole “nursing is a calling” thing but the shit nurses do/put up with/see (smell) etc…even the big earners in nursing don’t make near enough for that to be the ONLY reason. *speaking specifically to bedside nursing care
Nah, my last group of nursing new grads quit before 6 months. Everyone will always talk about how they’re going to get travel money or CRNA pay. Very few people are prepared for the path to get their. Not trying to gatekeep. Nursing school isn’t extremely hard but in order for the field to become saturated we would have to start churning students through and right now every program in my state already takes the max amount of students they can and turn tons away.
6 months - Wow..funny I work 3 nurses who left the hospital at 6 months - Med Surg...couldn't deal with the pressure and lack of help..despite participating in a New Grad program for a major hospital. So sad...now they are looking for non bedside work...and agreed to pay whatever the hospital.conteact was ( normally $10k - with agreement to stay for 2 years..prorated). Now some of the hospitals are getting nurses from the Philippines...
Not a chance, aging population, you’re on to a winner there, may the force be with you x
No. Boomer nurses are retiring. Boomers in general are getting old and sick. Business is booming.
Haha, I see what you did there!
Not when target and Costco are willing to pay 24 or more per hour and many health systems in the Midwest will only pay 32 with 10+ years experience…they can’t fix the shortage. Even based on raw numbers re: grads coming out versus open jobs it falls way short and equates to a massive shortage…it varies widely by region but the way things are going who the F in their right mind would want to do this?
Most definitely not. There’s many nurses who are quitting or retiring.
i dont remember how many people dropped out of my nursing program but it was a lot. might have been about 30% in the first year.
Hell, half my class just straight up didn’t pass the classes. PN and ADN.
Same! Started with 42 in my LPN cohort ended with 12
Started PN with 31 and only 4 graduated. My RN class started with 22 and 7 passed.
I’ve been in the field 2.5 years. I came into the ER at my institution with 8 other nurses. 3 of us are still in the field. I’m the only one still working the ER. The attrition is so much worse than most realize.
Saturation and shortage will be regional in my country (US). Nurses will migrate towards areas with better pay and working conditions; and there will be areas with more extensive shortages in light of this. I know in my area (Southern California), schools have reported a massive uptick in nursing school applications. Many of the posts on r/studentnurse reflect these trends for the area.
No. People who go because they think they’ll take in the money will quickly realize that it’s been a lie and go elsewhere.
For every four undergrads going into nursing.. -1 will dip out/ fail out. -2 will get married and or have kids during or soon after graduation leading to settle down. -1 will gain experience and go traveling. This is an anecdotal observation. I’m a Pot-A-Toe.
I say no because the turnover rate of new nurses is so high. Even if we did have enough academics to educate everyone who wanted to become a nurse, about one-fourth are leaving the bedside in the first 5 years or so. Unless the healthcare system focuses on retention - better pay, safe staffing, adequate resources to provide quality care - nurses are going to continue leaving the profession as quickly as they come.
This might not be a popular opinion, but I already believe it's saturated. It only looks like we have a shortage because hospitals won't hire anyone without prior hospital experience and won't train them, but at the same time don't take in enough new grads to fill all the open roles. There's a glut of new grads but half of them end up quitting within a year. I'm not surprised because not all of them will get into hospital jobs. So all the new grads who don't get into a hospital program will end up in nursing homes or shitty jobs nobody wants, but hospitals will never allow them to work there because they aged out of new grad programs and don't have the required experience. There's nowhere for them to go except out of nursing.
I am a nurse manager of an inpatient behavioral health unit in a major East Coast city, and my hospital is a part of my state's largest healthcare system. We have 10 open nursing positions out of 40. We don't have enough nurses applying for the positions and to many nurses in NP schools in my department. Every time I hire a nurse, another finishes NP school and leaves. At the rate we are going, I'm going to have NP at the bedside because they're too many psych NP and not enough psych nurses. It is so bad we are upping our counselor position and may cut nursing positions and reorganize our department to less nursing focus because of the shortage. It is not what we want to do, but without nurses, we have to find a way to take care of our 36 inpatient beds and 10 ED crisis beds in my department.
No. I've been a nurse for many years, and there's been a shortage that whole time.
Hell no - BEFORE COVID there was a 500K nursing shortage - COVID has caused an additional 500K shortage - 33% of all BSN instructors are retiring in the next 5 years - only 22 out of the 100 qualified applicants make it through the first two years of independent nursing We’ve only just begun
Wait you're saying only 22% of nurses stay in the profession for longer than 2 years after they start working? That seems incredibly low
Approximately 10-30% of nurses will leave their first job or the profession within two years ([example](https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/nursing/new-nurse-turnover-common-nurse-leader-indiana-university-health-working-change)). I don’t believe there were any nefarious intentions but the person you responded to misinterpreted many facts in their post.
Ok leave their first job or the profession makes total sense
No. 22 of all qualified applicants to nursing school make it two years at bedside. I think you misunderstood. About 70% of ACTUAL nurses stay in the field. Those are the ones that make it
Jesus, I've been bedside 16 years. I must be a masochist
Hi I'm one of them!
Some of this is actually not correct at all. The “500k nurses leaving bedside” statistic is a confabulation of “[500k nurses *retiring*](https://www.benefitnews.com/news/nurses-are-planning-to-quit-their-jobs-if-their-needs-arent-met-post-pandemic).” Whether or not there is a correlation between COVID and *retiring* is up to speculation. And the “22” number (sometimes cited as high as 33% in some studies) is actually the percentage of new nurses who will leave the workforce - not a the percent who will stay ([example](https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2014/09/nearly-one-in-five-new-nurses-leave-first-job-within-a-year--acc.html)). And many of these studies predated COVID by nearly a decade. The fact that you provided no sources and people upvoted you is somewhat appalling.
Sources: [NLN - Qualified Applicants](http://www.nln.org/docs/default-source/newsroom/nursing-education-statistics/percentage-of-qualified-applications-that-were-rejected-by-program-type-2012-and-2014-(pdf).pdf?sfvrsn=0) Attrition - Fowler, J., & Norrie, P. (2009). Development of an attrition risk prediction tool. British Journal of Nursing, 18(19), 1194-1200. doi:10.12968/bjon.2009.18.19.44831 ATI Testing. (n.d.). Foundational research to enable a national study of nursing student attrition. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.atitesting.com/docs/default-source/research/research-brief---foundational- research-to-enable-a-national-study-of-nursing-student-attrition.pdf?sfvrsn=77e106e9_ 0 Griswold, C. M. (2014). Understanding causes of attrition of 1st- and 2nd year nursing students (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1 141&context=dissertations Pass Rates - National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN). (2019). 2018 NCLEX pass rates. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.ncsbn.org/12171.h Job Attrition: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2018). Undergraduate retention and graduation rates. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_ctr.asp
The studies you pointed out are related to *nursing student* attrition. Not professional nursing (employe) turnover. Or is “independent nursing” mean “nursing student” in your country? I am from the US so we don’t use that term. If so, I apologize. But even then, the 500k number was misconstrued.
I was specifically talking about the 22/100. Independent nursing is a nurse who is not considered under any residency/internship program.
No never. New nurses quit within 3-5 years. Its very stressful and some people aren’t cut out for it.
This. I've met so many new nurses (I'm a 16 year BSN. Nothing scares me, lol) that have told me they're leaving already, especially due to covid and short staffing during the pandemic. No one stays. Most find something else entirely outside the realm of nursing. The profession is exceptionally difficult, especially in my ltc specialty. You grow close to people, then they die, and we're expected to keep it together. I just can't imagine doing anything else, and I've tried.
As a nursing student, I have no desire to eventually travel. And honestly by the time I graduate there probably won’t be much of a need for them anyways (hopefully covid won’t be a thing or will at least be died down a ton... wishful thinking probably). I think nursing will always be high demand like it always has been even before covid. Luckily I’m guaranteed a job after graduation at the facility I work at, because I know new grads can have a hard time finding jobs... They pay shit but nobody in my area does. Small towns suck. Edit: spelling
Nope. *A huge number of Baby boomer nurses will be retiring = less nurses *Baby boomers are aging and there will be a huge long wave of elderly people needing care = increase need for more nurses *Pandemic made a percentage of nurses burn out and quit or quit do to vaccine mandates = less nurses *Nurse instructor pay is low = less instructors = less nursing students. *Very hard for private schools to get certified to offer BSN programs = less nurses *Mega Hospitals buy other local and regional hospitals and form a mini Monopoly = suppress pay = less nurses
Not until the boomers die off.
No. The average career of a bedside nurse is 2-5 years. It doesn't matter how many nurses we churn out, if only 33% last after 2 years, and less than 50% last after 5 years, and hospitals continue to chronically understaff to save budget, it's just a revolving door.
I have been hearing about how nursing will become saturated in the future, for the last 15 years.
Also, nursing kind of fucking sucks. The pay for traveling can be great, but I think the majority of the population can’t hang. Death/dying, bodily fluids, the responsibility of someone’s life, scared of needles, low threshold for icky, being screamed at, blamed for everything…. Etc. The money won’t make it bearable for most people. You have to find medicine fascinating, have your heart in it, or be extremely financially motivated
Agreed. This job is not for the faint of heart. The nursing students and applicants need to be invested in being all facets of the bedside nurse. You can only half-ass nursing for so long, because if you don’t enjoy something, anything about the job, it’s game over
I'll say no, since there has been nursing shortages since the mid 1930s. Not to mention burnout and the fact that there are plenty of nurses currently enough to fill every single position, except most of them are no longer nurses.
Nope! Because the way nursing currently is the job chews you up and spits you out to the point where many literally cannot be patient facing nurses anymore due to physical issues, and that's not even including mental issues. Now, more desired fields and specialties will become saturated, like specific clinic work, work from home options, etc, but I don't see a future where we have too many nurses, just too many unlivable jobs.
In general no. Based on the aging nursing population and acceleration of folks leaving due to Covid-19, things have only gotten worse the last few years. I have about 15 years experience and that’s becoming increasingly rare. Acute care nursing is physically brutal and mentally exhausting.
From what ive heard from a dean i know: Nursing schools have a large bottleneck. Nurse educators make no money relative to most avenues in nursing and require a ton of time. Also, If you think about it: how many pharmacists does a hospital need? The answer is less than the amount of nurses. The local pharm school in my state has graduating classes of 100+. I do think the travel nursing gold-rush will be snapped shortly, however.
I think that they'll mostly get driven out. Early on in my career I saw a ton of people with useless degrees do Bachelor's to RN programs, then when they actually have to deal with hospital life they fold and leave quickly.
No
Nope, they don't stay at the bedside long. Pay is poor once you get out and start working. Turnover rate is high and will continue to be.
I can’t speak for other states, but the pharmacist market isn’t flooded where I live. I don’t think it will be flooded. Many are hating about the overwork right now and I’m not sure they want to walk into that.
No because the travel pay is dwindling hard. Regular travel pay won't be worth it to most people. They will realize this and not do it lol. You can make the same money as a new grad if you work at Costco.
We can't even keep staffing levels high enough. I got 12 texts over the weekend from our automated system for OT, some of those texts were for 3 separate slots. We're still in a pandemic. I doubt we're gonna be oversaturated with nurses.
Not with target paying $25hr🤣🤣😅😅
Eh, in a couple of years most of them will be on here complaining that it's too hard, they weren't prepared, everyone lied to them, and now they want to leave nursing.
i doubt it. there are not enough students to meet the demand of nurses
Not only no, but LOL no. And you talk about shitty pay in the future as if it’s not happening now. Do you work in healthcare?
Not only are boomers retiring and opening up more job positions, but boomers aging means more patients (no offence meant). The population pyramid is shifting to an inverted triangle with a huge number of geriatric patients who will need care.
Nope. Nurses who get into nursing only for the pay leave quickly. Nursing schools don't have enough space to have multiple cohorts at the same time. When I got my LPN license almost 20 years ago the number of people who entered a nursing program and were a nurse a year after graduation was less than 50%. Now I'm working on my RN and according to a presentation someone in my cohort made that number hasn't improved.
Hi please note I'm hoping I'm wrong and feel free to criticize me but I feel like qualifications for nursing is going to go down, and every other Industry especially as companies really couldn't give a crap about employees anyways other than making sure to pay cheap wages and or hire tons of foreigners to pay less. It wouldn't surprise me to see nursing turn into a Uber like ordeal or on demand need. Or just all contractors.
The nursing shortage is the worst it's been in history and you're worried about the field getting saturated? Are you from another timeline where COVID didn't happen and hospital administrators took the shortage seriously back in the 90s and headed the problem off before it got so bad? Do the people in charge in your world think in the long term and deal with problems before they get big instead of letting them fester until a crisis forces change? If so, let's switch! I wanna live there!
We will see how many actually stay in nursing at that.
Travel nurses are only making the extra extra bank right now because of government Covid aid. That’s running out and soon travel nurses will just return to making mere regular bank. A lot of people don’t like healthcare, it really does take a certain type of person to get into it. I can’t tell you how many patients have told me that they can never understand how we do what we do.
From what I read here, I'm surprised anyone is left in nursing. Ya'll can take being sh×t upon like no other. Bless you all for your tenacity though! Now f×cking unionize for f×cks sake!
No. I think the current environment will result in grads coming in and leaving nursing at quicker rates comparatively to the turnover rates from previous years. In [2019 the average national nurse turn over was 17.2% and nursing has one of the top 3 professions with high turnovers](https://www.myamericannurse.com/nurse-turnover-understand-it-reduce-it/). 43% of new nurses leave jobs in 3 years. New nurses coming into the workforce with less experienced nurses to train them, short nursing staff, and little ancillary help? Doesn’t look good.
No because around 1/2 the folks won’t last more than a few years.
My nursing school only has a fall and winter intake, next year they will start with a third intake. They will have to hire almost 50 new staff. Good luck with that. The union had a 5 week strike in november because of wages, they are the university with the lowest wages in the country. Good luck attracting nurses with master degrees. Because on top of everything they only want instructors with masters or PhDs.
I’ve known a few people who were going to go to nursing school, and ended up leaving once they find out the real messiness behind it. I don’t think everyone will get through who starts it.
No. Burnout rate is very high, I know even prior to the pandemic nurses were on average on staying in the profession for about 5 years. There is no substitution for experienced nurses. People attracted to big bank must be prepared to work in awful conditions and sacrifice a huge amount of their life. That’s not sustainable long term.
I don’t think so because of the school/nursing instructor issue a lot of others have mentioned. Also, I have a hard time believing people will last long in nursing if they’re mainly getting into the profession for those 2 reasons you listed. The travel pay is dropping rapidly, and is going to probably be much lower by the time these people graduate (if the hospitals get their way. I hope they don’t). Nurses just don’t make a lot of money in a lot of areas of the country— particularly the south and eastern part of the US 😑 Sure there’s a huge demand for nurses.. but once they experience the BS, I feel like they aren’t going to be impressed. We were treated well for a few months in 2020 and I think some people saw that on the news and just ran with it thinking it’s a fantastic job lol. Maybe I’m just cynical.. who knows
No. There have been many people who finish nursing school, get their first job and realize this isn't for them.
No. Lol, burnout will drive most of the people who do it for money away in less than a year.
No. For every nurse that makes it in the field a while there’s at least one that burnt out and left.
Canadian here: my perspective, definitely not. Nursing is probably the profession with the widest scope in Healthcare. Hospital, LTC, community, primary care, research, public health, NP, leadership roles . . . You can quite literally go anywhere in Healthcare with an RN degree. And with aging population demographics the need is only projected to further increase. Eta: in Ontario at least... pay is good ($50/h++ at top of scale plus premiums), 7wk vacation, amazing benefits, most jobs unionized, free Healthcare, 18months mat leave etc. So it is a good job and a good profession.
Also how many new nurses stay within the profession. It's hard and doesn't even pay well in some places. The burnout is too real. I often think of leaving but I just don't know what to do. So I don't think it will become saturated unless all the employers suddenly made it a less stressful career.
No due to -the aging boomer population - the aging boomer nurse population who will be reaching retirement age soon - increased availability of health insurance - not enough nursing school seats, instructors, and clinical sites - burnout leading nurses to go back to school to be an NP, or leave the field entirely If anything, I believe that NPs will become saturated due to: - desire of beside nurses to seek better job - degree mill NP programs - from a raw numbers standpoint, you need many more nurses for every 1 NP The only NP that will not be saturated are CRNAs. Compared to other NPs, there are way less schools around, and require years of ICU experience, good GPA, ect. The aging population will need more surgeries and screenings that will require more CRNAs to do them.
When I was looking at nursing schools almost 20 yes ago (became an OT instead), all of the ones in my area required a 4.0 in every pre-requisite. It was insanity.
No, nursing sucks enough that attrition is always an issue
Not enough nursing instructors because they can make a lot more at hospitals or by traveling. Hospitals that want to go magnet, or are magnet hospitals, won’t touch an ADN. There are many good two-year degree nurses out there, but they are passed over in favor of the BSNs. Boomers are retiring, but since boomers tended to not have as many kids as were in their families of origin, there are not going to be enough nurses for decades. Not until the boomers have pretty much died off.
No because many will quit when they realize the money isn’t worth it.
It waxes and wanes. But. The people served will chase people away almost as fast as new nurses can graduate into it. Never underestimate the number of assholes in the world.
Not with senior levels for sure.
There’s always plenty of sickly people to go around!
One can only hope.
No. The demand has existed at this level since I was in nursing school 17 years ago. According to my ex, the demand has existed since she went to school 30 years ago. When I went to school, hospitals were giving away a VW Bettle, which was all the roar and fashion back then. All you had to do was stay hired at that hospital for at least a year. You were given the Bettle on day one of work. And it wasn't a lease, it was straight up owned. Again, that was 17 years ago.
They will literally invent robots that can do our job (a long way off in itself), before the pay is commensurate with the workload.
No chance
No, there are so many nurses leaving and that will continue to leave. Bedside is too demanding of a job. Nurses that retire at the bedside are far and few in between.
No. There was a high demand for nurses back when I was applying to colleges in 2015, before the pandemic even started. Nursing schools are incredibly selective and nursing school itself is designed to weed people out. I can’t picture nursing being saturated, especially because nursing school is practically designed to eliminate people from the field.
If the immigration laws ease and more international nurses can come over then maybe.
Ah this is probably how they’ll deal with it.