Posted on 07/27/2009 6:14:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
For more than a decade, the U.S. has faced a shortage of nurses to staff hospitals and nursing homes. While the current recession has encouraged some who had left the profession to return, about 100,000 positions remain unfilled. Experts say that if more is not done to entice people to enter the field—and to expand the U.S.'s nurse-training capacity—that number could triple or quadruple by 2025. President Barack Obama's goal of expanding health coverage to millions of the uninsured could also face additional hurdles if the supply of nurses can't meet the demand.
Some lawmakers are looking to the immigration pipeline as one means to raise staffing levels. In May, Representative Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) introduced a bill that would allow 20,000 additional nurses to enter the U.S. each year for the next three years as a temporary measure to fill the gap. If the bill doesn't pass on its own, lawmakers may include it in a comprehensive immigration reform package. Obama is slated to meet with congressional leaders on June 25 to discuss reforming U.S. immigration laws.
Hospital administrators such as William R. Moore in El Centro, Calif., a sparsely populated town 100 miles east of San Diego, see the Wexler bill as a potential life raft. Moore is chief human resources director at El Centro Regional Medical Center, a 135-bed public hospital that typically has 30 open positions for registered nurses (RNs). While it's hard to lure nurses from nearby big cities (San Diego is 100 miles west), Moore says he could quickly recruit dozens of eager, qualified nurses from the Philippines if the government allocated more visas. "All we want is temporary relief," says Moore. "Let us get a group of experienced RN hires from the Philippines, and we won't ask for more."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
I see the H1B solution is spreading to other professions. Instead of offering a higher wage to entice more people to enter the field of nursing, the health racket now just wants to undercut wages and benefits by bringing in foreign workers who will do the job for less.
Maybe 70, 60 or 50 ?
I guess all the nurses to replace all those tonsillectomy performing pediatricians & other docs isn’t going to pan out for Obama and the democrats.
These idiots in Washington need a dose of their own medicine.
I happen to know many of these nurses, and while they are good people, hardworking, they are NOT up to snuff to be RNs at US standards.
They usually require additional training, plus there are still some language barriers.
And do I really believe that they "won't ask for more"?
H1B’s have decimated the IT and Engineering profession so why not do the same for Healthcare? Of course accidentally killing someone might have greater consequences than writing poor code. We are destroying the middle class from top to bottom.
Actually at the Medical University of SC some nurse anesthetists make over $210K per year)
Rationed healthcare will solve this problem, because the average life expectancy will drop down to about 50 years old.
No, the hospitals are looking for “cheap” help. There are plenty of US nurses, but the hospitals want to pay third-world pay rates.
Good. My wife is going into nursing. Nice to know that there is a bottomless pit of demand for that line of work...
In the defense of hospitals, if we removed the bag limits on lawyers to reduce the malpractice load, the medical cost crisis would vanish!
“Obama is slated to meet with congressional leaders on June 25 to discuss reforming U.S. immigration laws.”
Did this meeting get reported on? What was discussed? Inquiring minds want to know what BO has decided “immigration reform” will look like. All his other “reforms” mean more big government taking away our freedom.
Shall we job out "reporting and editing" to people from India who will work for $6,000 a year? I'll bet we'd have "journalist shortages" too if the wages were dropped by importing foreign workers.
Raise the pay and they'll be nurses, and nurses and nurses - everywhere.
Students lining up for nursing spots but program openings limited
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20090726/NEWS01/907260547/1001/NEWS
Why would anyone go to the expense and effort of becoming a nurse if their efforts are going to be undercut by imports?
www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200905 - [Cached Version]
Published on: 5/20/2009
A-B Tech nursing department said this year some graduating nurses didn’t even get interviews at hospitals where they had applied, and some hospitals that may have hired nurses before they were licensed aren’t doing that this year.
Some graduates of A-B Tech said they had applied to area hospitals and had not heard back. Those who were granted interviews were told they were up against dozens of other candidates and didn’t receive offers.
The situation is in sharp contrast to past years.
“Usually, anyone who wanted a job had a position offered to them” . “We’re not seeing that this year.”
Unable to find full-time employment, some graduates from A-B Tech have taken part-time positions or gone back to jobs they held before they received their nursing degree, while others are looking into taking jobs that may not have been their first choice.
This is from an article in our local paper. Our local hospitals are not hiring many new nurses. Some nursing homes have a hiring freeze. Theres’s no nursing shortage here, it’s a job shortage.
Not only are there not enough people, getting through nursing school is HARD.
My wife currently works as a hospital lab tech, which thanks to automation and centralization is a quickly dying field. She’s going back to nursing school now for a career change. She just took Anatomy & Physiology over the summer and while she aced it with the best grade in the class, nearly HALF the other students, mostly typical college-age kids, flunked out.
It’s also not easy to get into nursing school programs. There is alot of competition, and it’s pretty much a given that you already have to have work experience in health care.
Not one statement on health care change includes the requirment that medical schools add more students. Face facts 90% of all medicine can be performed with the help of web materials, so it no longer requires a 4.00++ grade point average for a student to get through medical school or to be a darn good doctor. Because the vast majority of classes are available to students online just minutes after the class is taught - via streaming video - the schools can add 50 or more people to each class x 100+ medical schools in America and you have 5000 more doctors each year. More doctors, more choices and lower costs.
Maybe because the schools are churning out graduates that think it's some kind of sin to get your hands dirty.
A former girlfriend is an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) nurse supervisor at a Boston-area hospital. She makes well over $120,000/year working three 12-hour shifts. In addition to points made by Zeddicus re: the difficulty of nursing school, she noted that many new native-born nurses are reluctant to doing some of the unpleasant jobs nurses must do, such as cleaning up after patients. When higher-ranking nurses must do those jobs, it promotes a very negative environment.
Most of her Filipino nurses are willing to work undesirable shifts. Additionally, they seem to have a higher tolerance for some of the worst patients in the ward.
Interesting - I heard a radio interview with several unemployed nurses last week (I believe it was on NPR) saying that there was no nursing shortage, that in fact there was a glut. Is it a location thing?
Thanks very much for posting this article. Of course, once again, the MSM has confused “shortage” with “scarcity”.
ping
If obamacare passes, there will be a severe shortage of both doctors and nurses.
Some lawmakers are looking to the immigration pipeline as one means to raise staffing levels.
Some lawmakers wouldn't consider hiring a natural born American citizen if their life depended on it.
Young girls today do not want to be nurses. If they consider a career in health care at all, almost all say that they would like to be pediatricians.
Ok, now that I have all of this out of my system, I'm actually going to read the article...
I work for a health care facility.
We have experienced problems finding nursing staff.
According to the people doing the hiring, the problem has been a lack of space at nursing schools, due to a lack of faculty. Apparently, nurses can make a lot more nursing than they do teaching.
We have imported a few nurses, some from the Philippines, and at least some required additional training. It was not cheap to import them. We had to pay attorney fees, immigration fees, etc.
We pay the imported nurses wages comparable to those we pay our other nurses, which is a lot.
We also have a hard time finding respiratory therapists.
For anyone who can stand the work, it can be a good living.
For me, the wages would never be high enough to deal with the tasks involved in RT work.
By the way, a lot of our current staff is of Filipino heritage.
Well said.
Not only will foreign born nurses do the job for much less, they send substantial portions of their paychecks home to their families, thereby removing those dollars from the US economy. But, hey, go right ahead and bring more over.
Then their is Ursline College that from what I hear is booked solid.
Lack of doctors, lack of nurses, lack of IT Professionals...but we have an effective 26% unemployment rate...something smells to the high heavens.
Yes and no.
Although the hourly pay rate is somewhat comparable, for some reason, nursing faculty is often part time. Clinical instructors are also almost always part-time. So, although you have a somewhat comparable hourly wage (given the fact that in most cases, you are not actually doing actual patient care work) you will have to take on other part-time work to compensate. Teaching ends up simply being "pin money." Also, depending on your employer, you could be forced to work overtime, thereby messing up your school schedule.
Also, if there are not sufficient numbers of students enrolled, you will not even have a class to teach that semester. So, those are some reasons why there is a "shortage" of nursing faculty.
PLUS (she shouts) very often, schools require a Doctorate in Nursing to teach. How many of those are out there?
The community colleges have waiting lists because there is a “shortage” of nursing faculty.
:)
Our local community college’s RN program has a 2 year waiting list.
picture a nurse in a burqua coming to give you an enema....
Then it looks like it is time to dig down and ante up some more coins for the talented...aye?
There are two major things that could have been done in Colorado that would have provided jobs and long term infrastructure stimulus:
1. A third bore to the I-70 Eisenhower Tunnel under the Rocky Mountain Continental Divide, necessitated because of periodic massive traffic congestion at this critical national choke point.
2. Funding to increase pay for teachers at Colorado nursing schools, because the pay is so poor that few nurses want to teach, preferring much higher wages in real practice, thus assuring a continued nurse shortage in our state in an industry critical to us all.
There was not one peep from Colorado’s Congressional delegation about either of these projects when the massive near-trillion dollar “stimulus” bill was rammed through Congress. Instead, we got a few more miles of road chip sealing and a few extra stop lights in our county.
At first, I though it was typical small-minded thinking that perpetuated the “stimulus” monstrosity. But then I realized that the “stimulus” bill was never about helping the economy, helping our country, or helping our people. It was nothing but a massive political payback. Money intended to go to people and organizations that were expected to contribute some of it back during the next elections.
Given the precipitating factors of our current economic disaster, namely 2 trillion dollars lost in stock market wealth, 2 trillion dollars lost in home values, and 2 trillion dollars of loans that will never be paid back, the catastrophic economic results were completely predicable based on the proportion of wealth lost compared to the GDP and what happened in 1929 and the proportions of loss then.
The failure of Obama and the Democrat Congress to focus on trying to help the economy, help our people, and help our country is nothing short of criminal, as instead, they focused exclusively on political paybacks and trying to implement divisive and destructive ideological programs in the face of our overwhelming economic disaster and consequent suffering of our people.
I fervently pray that our nation’s people awaken to the calculated destruction that is being deliberately done to them in the name of implementing a misguided ideology, regardless of their suffering, and that they vote these evil elected officials from office as soon as possible.
The hospitals are waiting with bated breath as to how the whole “health care debacle” is going to pan out. Plus, the major hospital systems just announced agreements with the government to accept a cut of some 150 billion dollars in medicare and medicaid payments over 10 years. Hence the hesitancy to hire new nurses or keep the current numbers the have now with out cutting employment.
The hospitals are waiting with bated breath as to how the whole “health care debacle” is going to pan out. Plus, the major hospital systems just announced agreements with the government to accept a cut of some 150 billion dollars in medicare and medicaid payments over 10 years. Hence the hesitancy to hire new nurses or keep the current numbers the have now with out cutting employment.
The woman they interviewed said that one reason she (and other new graduates) couldn’t find a job was that experienced nurses had increased their numbers of shifts-worked, possibly to compensate for spousal unemployment. Do you think she really didn’t want to work night, or some other less-than-desirable, shift?
Imported or domestic, one can never have enough nurses.
Are they f——— nuts? New grad nurses cannot find jobs. I have applied to forty places, multiple applications, two interviews. No job.
The nursing shortage is a lie.
Of course, just what America needs, more people employed that can hardly communicate in English...
We’re just sliding down a river into an abyss.
That would be my preference. Otherwise, it's time to lower my expectations.
Yes, because it is not a shortage, but rather, a scarcity. I do think that some geographic areas may have fewer open jobs.
I am very sorry that you are having a hard time, heartwood. What will probably happen is that 2 or 3 employers will call you at the same time, and you will have to decide which position you prefer. As a new grad, you may have to start out working on the midnight shift.
I think applying online must be a total waste of time. Unfortunately (now I know) I did an accelerated program and didn’t work part time as a tech, and those are the few new grads getting hired here. Because I have my nursing license, I can’t get hired as a tech and get my foot in the door. I have very few of the personal connections that can get me an interview, and I’ve worked the few I have.
I graduated first in my class, have EMS experience, ACLS certified - but that isn’t valued. Training me would be an investment but it makes more sense right now for hospitals to hire experienced people they can plug right in.
All the nurses whose spouses lost their jobs, whose 401Ks tanked, they’re working full-time instead of part-time, picking up overtime, putting off their retirements, not chancing risky career moves. Patients are losing insurance, forgoing elective surgery, deciding to treat themselves at home and not go to the ER.
What really scares me is that my clinical experience is getting further and further behind, and the next crop of new grads will get hired and not me. Moving is not an option, as dh is employed, making more than a nurse, and we’re can’t gamble on his income.
I should be grateful that he’s employed - so many are worse off.
<Maybe because there are NOT enough Americans who want to be nurses ?
Not quite. I used to be on a board for women who were going back to school. Many of them were in nursing programs or wanted to be. The problem is the pipeline. There just aren’t enough nursing professors for the programs. This limits the number of people who can be admitted, thus limiting the number of nurses in the field. Many of these women were commuting miles away from their nearest school because there just wasn’t room, or were on waiting lists for a couple of years.
I don’t know what nursing professors need by way of accreditation. I don’t think they need to be PhDs, but I would think they’d at least need a masters. It’s kinda like American engineering students - they can get a good job with the entry level degree and few of them go on for additional coursework.
That said, I you may have a point that not enough Americans want to be nurses. Career opportunities for women have opened up and there are many other fields to go into besides nursing and teaching.
We imported nurses from the Philippines maybe 20 years ago. I don’t know what the effect was on health care, but they were certainly around, at least in the big cities I lived in at the time.
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