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Program Description
“RN's For Hire: 500,000 By the Year 2025” – on Focus on Future Medicine and Genetics
The nursing shortage is nothing new: it began as a supply side shortage in the 1990s Join host Susan Dolan and her guest, Dr. Peter Buerhaus, healthcare economist and professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as they explore the history of the nursing shortage. Where we are today, and how we can prepare to minimize the looming shortage in years to come? While there are fewer vacancies in nursing today than in years past, the fact is that many nurses are retiring, schools are turning away nursing students, and, all the while, demand for nursing is steadily increasing. Listen in to find out what can be done about the predicament.
Transcript Excerpt
If you have just joined us, you are listening to Focus on Future Medicine on ReachMD, The Channel For Medical Professionals. I am Susan Dolan, your host and with me is Dr. Peter Buerhaus, the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee discussing the outlook for the nursing profession.
Dr. Buerhaus, describe what can be done to prepare for the future nursing shortages.
DR. PETER BUERHAUS:
I think there are a couple of things that we should be paying attention to. Number 1 is to adopt a long-run perspective and by that what I mean is currently today here in as we move in to 2009, many hospitals are beginning to find that they have all the nurses that they need. The shortage is beginning to even go in a way in some areas. That's been driven by the increase in the national unemployment rates in the country; 70% of nurses are married. So, what happens to their spouses' economic well being really is an important driver of whether or not a nurse will be working and how many hours that work. So, as more and more RN spouses lose their job or worry that they could be, it's driving the RN back into the labor market if she or he wasn't in it or if they are only working part-time. So as a result, hospitals are going to find they have got more nurses available to them than they have had in the past and there is a worry that it will sort of conclude, oh well, not a problem, no more shortage, move on to some other topic that meanwhile downstream, we have this blooming development in which we will see the bulk of the nursing workforce continue to age and after the year 2015, begin to retire out in large numbers just as more and more baby boomers are reaching 65, consuming more healthcare, demanding more healthcare, demand going up in the future, and the supply of nurses shrinking or at breath-holding study as we see this increased retirement.
SUSAN DOLAN:
Do you believe it's possible to prevent a future nursing shortage from developing?
...read more
Susan R. Dolan RN, JD, CHA is the coauthor of From the Start Consider the Finish: A Guide to Excellent End-of-Life Care (Outskirts Press 2007) and The End of Life Advisor: Personal, Legal and Medical Considerations for a Peaceful, Dignified Death (Kaplan 2009). She heads her own health care consulting company.
Dr. Peter Buerhaus is the Valere Potter Distinguished Professor of Nursing and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies, the Institute for Medicine and Public Health, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prior to becoming the Center director in January 2007, Dr. Buerhaus served as the senior associate dean for research at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing from 2000 to 2006. Before coming to Vanderbilt University, Dr. Buerhaus was assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health (1992-2000) where he developed the Harvard Nursing Research Institute and its post-doctoral program in nursing health services research. During the 1980s, he served as assistant to the chief executive officer of the University of Michigan Medical Center's seven teaching hospitals (1983-1986) and assistant to the vice provost for Medical Affairs, the chief executive of the medical center (1987-1990).
ReachMD, an innovative communications company, provides thought-provoking medical news and information to healthcare practitioners. Established to help increasingly time-constrained medical providers stay abreast of new research, treatment protocols and continuing education requirements, ReachMD delivers innovative and informative radio programming via XM Satellite Radio Channel 160 and online streaming developed by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals.
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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