FIGURE
In an effort to help solve the nursing shortage, I talked to a captive audience of six teenaged girls, including my daughter, during a long drive through the mountains. These girls were first-semester high school seniors[forms light horizontal]the age when young people are seriously looking at their future careers. I asked each of them, "What profession are you considering?" Not one expressed any desire to become a nurse. On further inquiry as to why not, their overwhelming response was: "We want to make decisions, not follow them".
Depressing? You bet! But my informal question merely confirmed many surveys that indicate kids who plan to attend college do not tend to consider nursing as a good career option. This is an alarming fact that bodes poorly for a large, impending problem.
The Shortage is Real
The current nursing shortage threatens to heavily impact our citizens' health and our nation's security preparedness. Federal projections indicate an increasingly serious national shortage of RNs within the next 10-20 years. The national unemployment rate of RNs is at its lowest level in more than a decade, while the total population of RNs is growing at the slowest rate in 20 years. In many states, the demand for RNs is already exceeding supply.
In the midst of this RN shortage, nursing care requirements will likely balloon in the coming years as the baby boomers age. Yet another blow to the future of RN supplies is the fact that approximately half of our nation's RNs will reach or be near retirement age in the next 15 years.
Added to the problem are frightening realities to these supply and demand stressors. High numbers of practicing nurses are considering leaving the profession in the next 5 years for reasons other than retirement, and almost half of the nurses working in hospitals are dissatisfied with their jobs. Additionally, the crop of student nurses in the pipeline is small. Enrollments and graduations from all RN programs have been declining since 1995.
The impending nursing shortage has not gone unnoticed by our professional nursing associations and legislators. I applaud all the national and local efforts to deal with the looming shortage. Many nursing and business groups are doing a tremendous job of addressing the RN shortage by emphasizing the prestige and honor of being a nurse. Unfortunately, however, one of the core reasons why the positive message is not making a large impact on future recruits is that many believe the practice of nursing is "subservient" to the practice of physicians.
Physician literature commonly discusses the negative aspects of the low RN numbers. However, organized medicine and many physicians must accept a large part of the blame for RN discontentment and the widespread low value often attributed to the nursing profession. Physicians have an option to step up to the plate to help lessen the RN shortage and improve the professional relationship between physicians and nurses.
Model Collaboration
Physicians' commitment to a collaborative health care model is essential. Under this model, neither the physician nor the nurse is an automatic supervisor over the otheraeinstead, the patients are the "captains of their own health care ship" and nurses and physicians are health advisors, caregivers and consultants as best suits the patients' needs.
Widely adopting a collaborative health care model would dramatically increase young people's attraction to nursing. Talented, intelligent, and caring high school students must believe that if they study and work hard in nursing, they can progress to a position of responsibility, autonomy, and leadership. Otherwise, why on earth would they want to enter a profession (i.e. nursing) where no matter how educated, competent and capable you are, you will ALWAYS be outranked by a physician (even when the physician may be inexperienced, incompetent, incapable or undereducated)?
Oh, about my conversation with those teens? Within 3 months of my passionately persuasive talk, two of the teens had enrolled in a baccalaureate-nursing program. One was my daughter.