This AM, Rachel Maddow on AAR, examined the impending nursing shortage

[BrklynLiberal]

crisis here in the US.


http://shows.airamericaradio.com/maddow/

"Also, this week marks National Nurses Week. In our weekly segment sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, SEIU Nurse Alliance President Cathy Singer Glasson joins us to talk about why nurses are leaving the profession in droves."

For some insight and information:
http://www.valuecarevaluenurses.org/
Part of an article from this site:

<snip>
It's a crisis felt across the country, where around half a million registered nurses have left the profession, fleeing for a host of reasons, say experts low pay, long hours and stressful working conditions.

The result is a nursing shortage expected only to grow as aging baby boomers flood the health care system. Worsening the situation is that today's nurses are older (average age, 46) and new nurses aren't materializing to fill the gap as they retire. It's estimated that by 2014, without drastic intervention, there will be a shortage of 1.4 million nurses.
<snip>
"We're simply an advocacy group that said, 'Look, there's a problem in our health care system,'" Porter said. "Nurses are the biggest chunk of health care givers, and we see the problems in a broader sense than anybody else. If we come together with one voice, we will carry more weight."

Perez said one way the group will work to improve nurse-patient ratios is to lobby for better pay for nurses, which would bring more of them back to the field and ease the number of patients they handle.
<snip>

[Sinistrous]

1. The Nursing shortage is not "impending."

It is already here and is critical.

Sinistrous

[BrklynLiberal]

3. You are absolutely Correct!!

[TNDemo]

2. And at my nursing school

they are insane. There are four semesters to the RN program. We started nursing I with 40 people. I just finished nursing II and there are 15 left. They will admit more people into nursing III that are repeating and LPNs testing in. Of the 25 people we have lost from my class (and other classes at this school have been just the same) they would all have been excellent nurses. The tests do not reflect the book or the lecture (when we get one). You have to be psychic or lucky to pass the tests. I am apparently one of those. Most of the teachers are insane and hate the students and apparently it is their goal to fail them. These are mostly adult students, back for their second degree. It is a state community college and you would think that kind of a pass rate would make problems for them but the only gain for them I can think of is it gives us a good NCLEX pass rate because so few people take it and they are the ones who managed to survive the program. Waiting lists for nursing schools are about two years long. The problem is at the school level. That's where the bottleneck is. We need to up the pay for the teachers to more good ones. There is definitely no lack of students - just lack of ways to educate them in a timely fashion and of course the Psycho University I attend that chases good qualified people out of the profession.

[bdamomma]

4. The Nursing crisis

is world wide, very bad indeed.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. kicked for more attention and discussion