By The nursing shortage is being called a very fragile crisis with an hour glass figure. Why?
The Tampa Bay Business Journal’s report includes figures on the rejection of nursing school applicants in 2007-2008, which gives us a clearer picture of how the nursing shortage is taking shape. According to the article, Florida appears to be one region with equal parts supply and demand in 2008:
Number of qualified, but rejected, nursing school applicants in 2007-2008:
12,563
FCN data on RN and LPN vacancies for 2007:
13,409.2
So picture it: The pool of rejected applicants equals the size of vacancies, with a narrow education bottleneck separating the two. What we’re looking at essentially is a very fragile crisis with an hour glass figure.
The most common reasons nursing school administrators cited for rejecting qualified applicants were not enough clinical sites for nurse training, lack of funds to add faculty and not enough qualified applicants for vacant faculty positions.
So where are the nurse educators and who should be supplying funds to build nurse training sites? For those considering a transition career in the current economy, why would one choose ‘nurse educator’?
