By 2025, experts project a national shortage of 130,000 registered nurses—an estimate significantly smaller than first anticipated. More than a decade ago, economists had calculated hundreds of thousands of nurses retiring at a rate far exceeding supplies. They estimated that annual retirement rates would jump from 20,000 to near 80,000 over the next 10 years. However, in the American Public Health Association’s latest issue of Medical Care, new research shows that an increase in RNs entering the workforce will help to offset much of the anticipated shortfall.
Moore Foundation grantee, Peter I. Buerhaus, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, and other researchers from the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Workforce Studies at Montana State University and Dartmouth attribute the spur of nurses entering the workforce to national initiatives designed to encourage more students to choose nursing. The Betty Irene Moore Nursing Initiative is a prime example. Faced with an inadequate capacity to enroll sufficient nursing students in San Francisco Bay Area schools of nursing in the early 2000s, the initiative implemented strategies to increase nursing enrollment, including an accelerated doctoral program.
Continued growth in the national nurse workforce is projected to increase from roughly 2.7 million full-time equivalent registered nurses in 2013 to 3.3 million in 2030. Despite these trends, researchers are cautious about the future state of the nurse workforce in the face of a rapidly evolving health care delivery system.
Read the full press release here and additional news coverage in FierceHealthcare, Hospitals & Health Networks, NursingTimes and Medical Express.
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