From yesterday’s Baltimore Sun:

In an effort to ease a worsening nursing shortage, state hospital and university leaders announced an ambitious plan yesterday to double the number of registered nurses educated in Maryland in two years.

The Cost: 59 million in 2 years, 2/3 to be footed by the state gov’t, the rest by private foundations.
The Players: The Maryland Hospital Association and leaders from various nursing schools
The Plan: Spend more money on faculty members. More faculty = more students who can graduate.

I’ve heard this solution proposed before and on the surface it seems to make sense. But it’s not the first time I’ve heard it proposed and I’ve yet to have seen it put into action. Perhaps taxpayers don’t want to spend 40 million on an issue they know very little about and probably don’t think it affects them (unless you’ve been sick before).

Obviously this is just my two cents but I am a nurse who would like to be working right now and I’m only giving out flu shots for few hours each weekend. How did this happen?

I would have loved to go back to the MICU but they don’t offer any kind of permanent schedule and I would have been required to rotate shifts, or only work nights (if I was lucky). They have no flexibility with respect to scheduling.

So instead I signed up for a nursing agency, because I was lead to believe they would have plenty of ICU shifts for me to fill, and the pay was much more attractive. As it turns out I have yet to work any ICU shifts. I’ve been doing special projects for a nursing administrator (collecting data for presentations to the Joint Commission.) And I’ve been doling out flu shots, all for premium pay.

I am a nurse who wants to take care of patients, but am not currently doing so. How did I fall through the cracks?

Could I have been more proactive in obtaining a job in a clinical setting? Sure.
Could the hospital have been more proactive in retaining me to work for them and actually take care of patients? Absolutely.

So maybe we should try asking nurses what they really want before we attempt to throw money at the problem. Until that happens, I’m not even sure I believe there is a nursing shortage.