Nursing shortages within the US: Has the pandemic worsened an existing problem?

This article was updated in July 2022.

It’s no secret that the United States is battling an ever-growing nursing shortage. The U.S. Bureau of Labor projects that 1.1 million recent RNs can be needed by 2022 to handle the big variety of impending nurse retirements and growing health care needs (American Nurses Association).

Taking together aspects comparable to an aging population, an aging workforce, population growth, and nurse burnout, especially during a worldwide pandemic, the nurse shortage seems more concerning today than ever. Although nurses may have the chance to decide on their employment within the near future, patients’ access to high-quality nursing care will decrease resulting from limited access to qualified nursing staff.

Nursing shortages are severely affecting communities and individuals. Haddad, Annamaraju and Toney-Butler (2022)¹ report that “nursing shortages lead to errors, higher rates of morbidity and mortality.” Nurses working in facilities which are understaffed are also rather more more likely to experience burnout, dissatisfaction and exhaustion, further exacerbating shortages.

Qualified nursing staff is essential

One of the major aspects causing nursing shortages is the shortage of qualified nursing staff. Report of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, AACN 2020-2021 Recruitment and completion of bachelor’s and master’s studies in nursing² states that “in 2020, U.S. schools of nursing rejected 80,521 qualified applications from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs due to insufficient faculty, clinical facilities, insufficient classrooms, clinical teachers, and budget constraints.” In a survey, most universities cited a scarcity of qualified staff as a key reason for his or her inability to confess all qualified nursing candidates (AACN, 2020). We are losing expert talent at a time when America’s health care system needs the clinical skills, leadership and compassion that nurses provide greater than ever.

While serving on a nursing faculty search committee at a regional university, I witnessed the problem of hiring recent nursing faculty. In addition to providing the time and value to finish a master’s degree, nursing faculty members are sometimes expected to have current and relevant teaching, clinical, and research experience. These high requirements mean that the pool of school applicants often stays small. Although RN certification represents a broad range of nursing knowledge, state boards of nursing require a certain level of clinical experience to show various clinical nursing specialties (i.e., pediatrics, women’s health, mental health, etc.). This signifies that sometimes nursing schools are unable to match faculty applicants to available positions. Additionally, nurses’ salaries may discourage qualified candidates. The American Nurses Association lists: average salary of a nurse (making an allowance for all settings and specializations) for $110,000³. Meanwhile, Average pay for an assistant professor of nursing with master’s training was $83,340⁴. This difference of roughly $27,000, or a “salary cut” of 28%, makes nursing education a less attractive nursing specialty.