The ongoing recession will help ease or even end the registered nurse shortage in many areas of the country, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs.
The study, "The Recent Surge in Nurse Employment: Causes and Implications," by Peter Buerhaus of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing and others, claims that older nurses are delaying retirement or returning to the workforce and part-time nurses are shifting to full time in response to the employment insecurity of their spouses.
However, the authors predict that the relief will be temporary, and that a new RN shortage looms in the next decade as baby boomers retire from the nursing workforce.
Without sufficient numbers of new nurses entering the workforce to replace those who will be retiring, the U.S. health system is at serious risk of being unable to meet the public's healthcare needs, the authors say.
According to Buerhaus and his colleagues, the number of RNs ages 23-25 has reached its highest level in two decades, most likely as a result of efforts to promote nursing as a career.
In addition, the researchers say foreign-born nurses are becoming an increasingly important part of the workforce. In 2008, 16.3 percent of RNs were foreign-born, up from 9 percent in 1994.
Despite the anticipated easing of the current RN shortage, the retirement of baby boomers from the nurse workforce is still likely to lead to a significant shortage of nurses in the next decade, say Buerhaus, the Valere Potter Professor of Nursing at Vanderbilt, and co-authors David Auerbach of the Congressional Budget Office and Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth College.
They project a shortfall of RNs developing around 2018 and growing to about 260,000 by 2025. Although these projections represent a smaller shortfall than earlier estimates, the magnitude of the 2025 deficit would still be more than twice as large as any nurse shortage experienced since the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s.
Avoiding this shortfall will require expanding the capacity of nursing education programs, which since 2002 have turned away 30,000 or more qualified applicants annually, the researchers say.