With all of the excitement over the election, and my usually hectic schedule (I finally sent my last two change of address cards–never mind that I moved 11 months ago), this entry sort of got pushed to the back of the pile. But a reader contacted me and asked me to read an article she had written, and to comment on it. And if I liked it, to please mention it on my blog.

Well, I do. It is a great article about those little details of nursing that most of the “experts” like to omit. It zooms right in on what the problems are in nursing, the real problems. And in looking at these real problems, it is impossible to just shrug the shoulders and say, “Well, we can solve the nursing crisis if only we offer more scholarships.” Or “Let’s try to get more minorities/men/three headed elves into nursing.” Or “We just need to turn out new nurses faster, and once we mass produce them, we’ll glue them into place on the job.”

You can read her whole article at Right Here! But here’s the first paragraph–and you can see why I like it so much…

Why Are Nurses Still so Underpaid?

The Mission-Critical Sticky Factors in Nursing

The nursing shortage is a veneer for other nursing-specific problems that really go under-reported. We tend not to hear about them because they lay bare a few disappointing truths about nursing often only known by insiders.

• First, nursing salaries stink—period.
• Second, nurses as a whole are uninspired when it comes to furthering their education or moving up the “healthcare ladder.” The rest of the world thinks it’s a novel idea, but nurses think little about it.
• Third, the nursing shortage doesn’t get any better when you try and put new nurses into the pipeline simply because it’s an open-ended model—as fast as you drop some new into the stack a slew of very experienced – the real valuable human resources – go tumbling merrily out the back side, relieved to be free and onto OTHER CAREERS, OTHER upward ladders.

These are huge factors in the nursing profession in one way or another and each poses a real world “sticky” problem.