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Nursing Shortage & Scope |
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- There are
126,000 nursing positions currently unfilled in
hospitals across the country. -American Hospital
Association
- Fifty-six percent of hospitals report they
are using agency or traveling nurses - at great expense
- to fill vacancies. -American Hospital Association
- On average, nurses work an extra eight-and-a-half weeks of
overtime per year. -Service Employees International
Union (SEIU)
- It is estimated that by 2020, there will
be at least 400,000 fewer nurses available to provide
care than will be needed. -Journal of the American
Medical Association
- Ninety percent of long term care
organizations lack sufficient nurse staffing to provide
even the most basic of care. -Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services
- There are roughly 21,000 fewer
nursing students today than in 1995. -American
Association of Colleges of Nursing
- One study found that in 1999, five percent of female college freshman
and less than .05 percent of men identified nursing as
being among their top career choices. -Nursing Economics
- Nursing schools turned away 5,000 qualified
baccalaureate program applicants in 2001 because of
faculty shortages. -Modern Healthcare
- In Georgia
alone, a quarter of the state's nursing school faculty
will retire or resign over the next four years. -The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- The average age of a
working registered nurse, 43.3-years-old, is increasing
at a rate of more than twice that of all other
workforces in this country -Journal of the American
Medical Association
- Organizations that are better able
to retain their nurses fare better on quality measures.
Low turnover hospitals - at rates under 12 percent - had
low risk-adjusted mortality scores as well as the low severity-adjusted lengths-of-stay
compared to hospitals with turnover rates that exceeded 22
percent. -Keith C. Kosel, Tom Olivo, "The Business Case
for Workforce Stability"
- Staffing levels have been factor in
24 percent of the 1,609 sentinel events reported to
the Joint Commission over the past five years. -Joint
Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations
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