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Summary Nursing shortages call for new tactics to attract workers
The need for new RNs to replace retiring Baby Boomers. Nursing is financially
rewarding and a helping profession.
With a major nursing shortage on the horizon, healthcare and nursing organizations are
giving the profession a dramatic makeover in hopes of attracting a new, diverse generation
of RNs to the workforce.
Groups like Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow and the Coalition for Nursing Careers in
California are launching image campaigns to update the public's perception of the
profession, and to ensure enough new RNs will enter the workforce to replace retiring Baby
Boomer nurses. Nursing experts talked to Monster.com
about the key messages they're crafting to entice prospective students to nursing careers.
The Era of White Caps Is Over
The public's image of nursing "is stuck in the 1950s," says Dan Mezibov,
spokesman for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. "There's a whole
universe of nursing out there that the public is not widely aware of," he says. For
example, many nurses now work as case managers, consultants, informaticists or in other
nontraditional roles. Nurses work in many settings besides hospitals, and some nurse
practitioners even have their own practices.
"The flexibility in terms of where to go in the profession is so wide," says
Katie Bray, RN, MBA, a nursing workforce consultant with Kaiser Permanente California.
"You can advance clinically or administratively, or you can do research. You have a
wonderful range of opportunities," she says.
Nursing Is a Relatively High-Paid "Helping Profession"
Many parents and school counselors who advise students about careers don't fully
recognize the rewards of nursing. "Nursing is attractive financially as well as being
a helping profession," says Sarah Keating, RN, EdD, chair of the California Strategic
Planning Committee for Nursing. In California, new graduates with bachelor's degrees are
earning starting salaries of around $50,000, she says. Bray agrees that nursing salaries
may be a pleasant surprise to some prospective students. "The pay is actually quite
good compared to teachers and social workers," Bray explains.
The Job Market for Nurses Has Bounced Back
Another reason parents and counselors may discourage nursing careers is they remember
the hospital mergers and consolidations of the 1990s that resulted in RN layoffs.
"They're apparently walking around with old headlines in their heads," Mezibov
says. "They're mistakenly thinking that the market for nursing is the same as it was
four or five years ago." In reality, the job market is expected to be strong for the
next 20 to 30 years, he says. According to a study in the June
14, 2000, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the majority of
nurses will be in their 50s and 60s by 2010. By 2020, our country may be facing a
potentially dangerous shortage in the supply of RNs unless more people enter the
profession.
The Best Nursing Workforce Is a Diverse Nursing Workforce
Although the Baby Boomer nurses who will be retiring in coming years are predominantly
white and female, they'll be replaced by a much more diverse workforce. Men make up just 6
percent of all RNs, but that number is growing through better awareness and targeted
recruitment efforts by nursing schools, Mezibov says. Nursing schools are also trying to
recruit more minority students and faculty. Some schools have stepped up efforts to
provide tutoring and remedial opportunities for English as a Second Language, set up
mentoring programs targeting minority high schoolers, and linked up with historically
black colleges, according to the AACN. In addition, individual nursing schools and federal
programs are making more scholarship money available for minority students, Mezibov says.
For more information about the looming nursing shortage, check out "RNs: Older and Fewer."
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