Did you know that in his 1945 State of the Union address, President Franklin Roosevelt called for a draft of female nurses? World War II was the first time that a real shortage of nurses occurred, and the bill passed both the House and Senate. The only reason that nurses escaped the draft was because the war in Europe ended a few months later.

It comes as no surprise to me that once again, we appear to be in the midst of yet another nursing shortage. Since around 1999, reports have been filtering in about a growing crisis in healthcare, namely, a continuing and escalating lack of qualified personnel. The media has been regularly reporting on the growing nursing shortage, highlighting the coming apocalypse if nothing is done to change the course of events. It reminds me of a line in the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, when the ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge the fate of Tiny Tim; that… “If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race will find him here.”

And so it will be for nursing. A nursing shortage of epic proportions has descended upon us, the media reports, much like the Biblical plagues which struck the heretics. The shortage has been slowly building steam for over a decade and is now striking with a vengeance. If the present situation continues unaltered, if the right steps aren’t taken immediately to curtail the crisis, we will be facing one of the greatest disasters in the history of modern healthcare.

In my earlier posts, I’ve mentioned that I was an escapee from the healthcare system, and that is exactly how I feel. I escaped from working in the nursing profession. There are no tears, no regrets, just simple relief and everlasting gratitude that I no longer have to put up with all that goes with being a nurse. I sometimes hesitate to mention my former career to people because then I usually have to brace myself for the deluge: But nursing is such a noble profession…we need nurses so badly…there’s a real nursing shortage going on, do you realize that?

Please, spare me the melodrama. There isn’t anything on the face of this earth that can could ever entice back to nursing, and especially, working in a hospital. When asked if I miss nursing, my standard response is usually, “Does a cancer patient who’s in remission miss their chemotherapy?”

I know, my attitude is a little jaded, but I can’t stand the hype and the theatrics now surrounding the so-called nursing shortage. Contrary to the mode in which news is often presented, nurses did not disappear overnight, nor is this the first time that there has ever been a nursing shortage. Sometimes the blame is laid on the massive lay-offs which occurred in the mid-1990s, when nurses were laid off in an effort to cut health care costs and maximize profits. But this highly detrimental move can be compared to pouring gasoline on an already raging fire. It certainly helped set the stage for what is being experienced now, but certainly was not the only underlying cause. Rather, nursing staff has been waxing and waning for the past 50 years. The shortage is comparable to a chronic illness which periodically exacerbates into an acute phase requiring emergency care. But whenever nursing has screamed out for life support, it’s always been denied. Instead of sending a trauma team, hospitals gather up a few Band-aids and a little bit of TLC. As a result, nursing shortages would merely revert back to their chronic phase, never healing and never reaching a stage of full recovery.

How’s this for some hot statistics? According to a survey conducted by the American Nurses Association, 55% of the RNs and LPNs who responded would not recommend the nursing profession as a career for their children or friends, while 23% said that they would actively discourage someone close to them from choosing nursing as a career. In another study, nearly half of the RNs surveyed said that if they were younger and just starting out, they would not choose nursing as a career.

Here’s an even better one: Right at this moment, there are well over 500,000 individuals licensed as registered nurses who are not working in healthcare. Half a million strong. True, some are retired, but over half are under the age of 60. That’s a lot of nurses out there who don’t want anything to do with nursing. Perhaps instead of calling it a nursing shortage, a more apt name would be a shortage of decent places to work.

Images: Courtesy of The Charles Dickens Page and the National Library of Medicine