Nurses within the US in 2020: who we’re and where we work

The World Health Organization announced 2020 because the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife”, celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of^vol anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. Nurses have all the time served on the front lines within the face of health crises, natural disasters and epidemics, and today isn’t any different. Comprised of dedicated and compassionate individuals, nurses are present at births and deaths, in moments of great joy and in moments of unspeakable sadness – they’re the backbone of the health care system. Let’s take a take a look at the newest American data and statistics for a occupation that has come a really good distance over the past two centuries.

Demography

With roughly 4 million registered nurses (RNs) within the United States, nursing is our nation’s largest health care occupation (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2020). Results from a 2018 national survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) (2019) provided baseline demographic data from over 50,000 registered nurse (RN) respondents:

• The average age of an RN is 48-50, with almost half of all nurses over the age of fifty
• Growing variety of male RNs – 9.6% in 2018
• 26.7% of RN respondents were minorities.
  • The RN population within the US consists of the next breeds:
    • 73.3% Caucasian/Caucasian
    • 7.8% African American
    • 5.2% Asian
    • 10.2% Latino
    • 0.3% American Indian/Alaska Native
    • 0.6% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander
    • 1.7% Two or more races
    • 1.0% Other
  • About 5% of RNs within the U.S. accomplished their training in other countries, and almost half got here from the Philippines, followed by Canada and India.

Education (Campaign for Action, 2020)

The Campaign for Action (2020), co-founded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), is tracking progress in implementing the 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations. One of the IOM’s goals focused on increasing the proportion of nurses with bachelor’s degrees to 80% by 2020. As of 2018, the proportion of nurses graduating with a bachelor’s degree in nursing (BSN) is roughly 57% (Campaign for Action, 2020). A recent report by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) found that schools of nursing were unable to confess greater than 75,000 qualified applicants to bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing in 2018 because of inadequate faculty, clinical facilities, classroom space, clinical faculty, and budgets (AACN, 2019). .

Approximately 18% of nurses have a university degree, resembling a master’s degree in nursing (MSN). Another IOM suggestion was to double the variety of nurses with PhD degrees by 2020. This goal was achieved because the variety of nurses with PhD degrees increased from just over 10,000 in 2010 to over 33,000 in 2018, representing roughly 1% of the workforce nursing work (Campania for Action, 2020).

Remuneration

Nurse salaries vary depending on education level, experience, role and geographic location. The demand for RNs will proceed to grow. Nurses with a bachelor’s degree will probably be in greater demand than nurses with no BSN. Employers may additionally prefer nurses with work experience or certification in a particular field. Data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics (2019a):

• Median RN salary = $73,300/yr ($35.24/hour)
• Typical entry-level education: Bachelor’s degree
• Number of jobs (2018) = 3,059,800
• Employment prospects: projection of growth rate for 2018-2028 = 12% (average for all professions is 5%)
• Employment change: projected numerical change = +371,500 over 10 years (2018 to 2028)
  • This projected job growth, while positive, is not going to be enough to offset projected job openings averaging roughly 210,400 RNs over the following decade because of retirement or profession change.

Employment

Nurses provide health care services in quite a lot of settings. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (2019a) divides these jobs into the next categories:

• Hospitals (state, local, private): 60%

• Outpatient health care (including doctor’s offices, home care and clinics): 18%
• Nursing and residential facilities: 7%
• Government: 5%
• Educational services (state, local, private): 3%

However, there are lots of employment opportunities for nurses outside of those environments. Nurses’ medical knowledge, clinical skills, time management and problem-solving skills might be applied to quite a lot of fields. Examples include:

• Administrative and managerial positions – one other goal of IOM was to advertise nurses to the positions of Board Members of corporations and institutions and increase this number to 10,000. As of January 28, 2020, the variety of nurses on boards was 7,100 (Campaign for Action, 2020).
• Certified nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) administer anesthesia and other medications during surgical, obstetric and other procedures.
• Forensic nurses assist in death or crime investigations.
• Nurse informaticians support the choice and implementation of technology in the ability.
• Legal nurse consultants interpret medical terminology for lawyers, function expert witnesses during legal trials, and seek the advice of with insurance firms and law enforcement agencies.
• Mental health nurses may go in addiction treatment centers and psychiatric facilities.
• Nurse educators are sometimes employed in hospitals to coach clinical staff or in private and public academic institutions to teach future nurses.
• Occupational health nurses help corporations improve the health and safety of their employees.
• Public health nurses provide health and wellness education schemes to the community and may go in schools, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies.
• Research nurses study the event and improvement of treatments and may go in academic institutions, pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations.
• Nurses working in research and manufacturing have opportunities to sell/market medical devices.
• Clinical authors and editors publish content in medical and nursing journals, textbooks, training manuals, digital resources, and marketing materials.

Advanced practice nurses

Many of the positions listed above require specialized training or certification and, in some cases, a sophisticated practice degree. Advanced practice nurses make up roughly 11.5% of the nursing workforce, with nurse practitioners (NPs) accounting for 68.7% of advanced practice licensure, followed by 19.6% of clinical nurse practitioners (CNS), 9.3% of registered nurse anesthetists, and a pair of .4% of certified nurse midwives (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2019). Let’s take a better take a look at advanced practice nurses.

Ŧ American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (2020)
§ American Association of Nurse Practitioners (2020)
Â¥ National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (2020)
†Â American College of Nursing and Midwifery [ACNM] (2017)

Application

Over the past few months, nurses, like other healthcare staff, have been praised for his or her courage and commitment throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. The role nurses are playing during this public health crisis underscores the importance and important need for a sustainable workforce. While registered nursing is anticipated to be one in all the professions leading in job growth, this may increasingly not be enough to offset the massive variety of nurses leaving the occupation. It will probably be interesting to observe the course of nursing school enrollment following one of the devastating natural disasters of our time.

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2019). Nursing fact sheet. https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Fact-Sheet

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2019). Nursing shortage fact sheet https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Shortage

American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (2020). Certified Nurse Anesthetist Fact Sheet. https://www.aana.com/membership/become-a-crna/crna-fact-sheet

American Nurses Association (2020). NP fact sheet. https://www.aanp.org/about/all-about-nps/np-fact-sheet

American College of Nurse Midwives (2017). Basic facts about midwives. http://www.midwife.org/default.aspx?bid=308

American Nurses Association (2020). Workforce. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/workforce/

American Nurses Association. (2018). 2018 ANCC Certification Data. https://www.nursingworld.org/~499e5e/globalassets/docs/ancc/2017-certification-data-for-website.pdf

Campaign for Action. (2020). Welcome to the long run of nursing: Campaign for Action Panel. https://campaignforaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/r2_CCNA-0029_2019-Dashboard-Indicator-Updates_1-29-20.pdf

National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (2020). About us. https://nacns.org/about-us/

US Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020a). Career Outlook Handbook – Registered Nurses. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, National Center for Health Care Workforce Analysis. (2019). A temporary summary of the 2018 national survey of registered nurses conducted in Rockville, Maryland. https://bhw.hrsa.gov/sites/default/files/bhw/health-workforce-analytic/nssrn-summary-report.pdf

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