By Claire Courchane
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The Washington Times
8:38 p.m.,
At a time when many Americans are in desperate need of a job, the field of nursing will soon be in desperate need of Americans.
The economic downturn of the past few years has temporarily eased the nation’s shortage of nurses, but university nursing schools say they are struggling to keep up with what is expected to be soaring demand and chronic shortfalls in years to come.
Employment services routinely list nursing as one of the hot hiring professions of the next decade, but supply never seems to catch up with demand - even as the national unemployment rate tops 9 percent.
May 6-12 is National Nurses Week. Don’t believe the hype that the nursing shortage is over.
After warning of a shortage for years, American hospitals now claim that we have plenty of nurses at the bedside.
Hospital administrators are essentially saying that the bad economy is coercing more nurses to stay on the job. Since some nurses’ husbands or wives have lost their jobs in other sectors, nurses are hanging on to their own jobs and delaying retirement.
