By Jennifer Larson, contributor
The dark clouds of the current recession seem to have one silver lining: new research shows the nursing shortage that has plagued the United States for more than a decade has finally started to ease. Does that mean the problem is solved?
Peter Buerhaus, Ph.D., RN, and a team of experts on the nursing shortage discuss current trends in nurse employment.
Not according to lead researcher Peter Buerhaus, Ph.D., RN, and his team of experts on the nursing workforce. They warn that there are still underlying issues that must be addressed to insure an adequate supply of registered nurses in the months and years ahead.
According to the researchers’ report published June 12 in Health Affairs and released at the Nursing Workforce Solutions for 21st Century Health Care Forum in Washington, D.C., the nation’s registered nurse employment has increased substantially since the recession began in late 2007.
In fact, in the article titled “The Recent Surge in Nurse Employment: Causes and Implications,” authors Buerhaus, David Auerbach, Ph.D., and Douglas Staiger, Ph.D., documented an increase of 243,000 hospital registered nursing jobs since the beginning of the recession, a figure that Buerhaus calls “an absolutely mind-blowing number.”
“It really surprised me,” Buerhaus, the Valere Potter Professor of Nursing at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies, Institute for Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., told NurseZone this week.
Buerhaus noted that the overall unemployment rate tends to increase during a recession, so he and his fellow researchers expected that they would find some nurses returning to the bedside or bumping up from part-time to full-time positions to perhaps compensate for a spouse’s loss of income. But they didn’t expect the number to be so high. After all, the previous high was an increase of about 184,000 hospital jobs for RNs during the 2002-2003 time period.
“I knew it would be up [this time], but I had no idea it would be anything like this,” he added.
Few good things have come out of the recession, but it appears that health care employment opportunities are relatively strong compared to other industries. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics continues to report an increase in jobs in the health care industry; the 24,000 jobs that were added in May represent a fairly typical gain in jobs for the industry throughout 2009.
However, despite the new employment data, the report’s authors cautioned that this should be a time for hospital executives and other leaders to work on addressing the issues that created and sustained the shortage in the first place while they have a chance to "catch their breath." If those issues, which include improving the capacity of the nursing education system to educate future nurses, are not addressed, the shortage may rebound, they warned.
In 2008, Buerhaus, Auerbach and Staiger published a book, The Future of the Nursing Workforce in the United States: Data, Trends and Implications, that predicted the nursing shortage would only worsen over the next dozen years unless major changes were enacted. That publication forecasted that a serious spike in the nursing shortage could occur in 2015, based on analysis of employment statistics and trends.
The authors estimated that the workforce would grow two or three percent annually but that would not come close to compensating for the numbers of nurses who would be leaving the workforce. A shortage of 285,000 nurses by the year 2020 was a possibility.
The researchers’ new estimates are more optimistic because of the recent spike in hospital RN employment and an increase in the numbers of younger people entering the nursing profession. But the authors are still calling for major changes.
“Because some employers and policymakers may interpret these outcomes as indicators that the ‘nursing problem’ is over, attention could shift away from the nursing workforce and toward other matters,” Buerhaus, Auerbach and Staiger wrote in the new report. “This shift in attention could be unfortunate, because an easing or end to the current shortage brought about by the recession gives employers and nurses a chance to ‘catch their breath’ and focus their efforts on addressing the implications of the changing composition of the RN workforce.”
For example, Buerhaus suggested that many facilities should strongly consider making workplace improvements because so many nurses suffer on-the-job injuries—and subsequently leave the nursing workforce. By making such changes, they may keep a few more experienced nurses on the job a few years longer, which could lessen the impact of the impending wave of retiring baby boomer nurses.
“We want them to stay in as long as possible,” he said. “After all, they’ve got a lot of knowledge and a lot of skill that we’re going to need and the younger nurses are going to need those mentors.”
He also hopes to see more investment in the nursing education system which will produce the nation’s future nurses. For the first time in two decades, the nation is experiencing an increase in the number of younger RNs in the workforce, a positive trend that needs to continue.
Despite the improved outlook for the future, “the ability to expand the long-term supply of RNs is in doubt,” the authors wrote. “Since 2002, nursing enrollments have increased so briskly that each year approximately 30,000 or more qualified applicants have been turned away from nursing education programs. Thus, barriers are blocking the needed expansion of the long-term supply.”
The authors also noted, “The public must hear messages that emphasize the long-term opportunities in nursing; and policymakers and educators need to hear messages that reinforce the need to preserve budgets for nursing education and remove the barriers to rapidly expanding the future of the RN workforce.”
Expanding educational capacity and removing the barriers that may preclude recruiting more men and more Hispanic people into the profession are potential solutions.
Buerhaus said he wants hospitals to use this time during the recession wisely to make long-term improvements that will stave off future nursing shortages. When the recession ends, many of those nurses who flocked to hospital jobs may leave the workforce again—and the nursing shortage could very well resume. So the time to act and to strengthen the current nursing workforce is now. And that includes legislators, too.
“Don’t let up just because ‘Oh, we don’t have a shortage now’,” he said. “Don’t lose sight of why it happened.”
Related Stories:
“The Recession’s Effect on Jobs for New Nurses”
“The Recession’s Impact on Hospitals”
“Nursing Jobs Grow Despite Recession”
“New Research Predicts Continued Nursing Shortage”
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