Florida News Article

Florida news article

Sheila Agno, Christopher Chow, Charlene Reiswig

NUR/531

Dec 8, 2014

Annette Marget

Florida news article

The shortage of nurses has been a dilemma for many years, and it continues to grow. Nursing profession is probably the largest fragment of the health care system. There are several reasons why there is such a shortage of nurses. It can be due to heavy population growth resulting in the need for more health care services, not enough nursing faculty, and also the aging of the current nurse workforce. “While shortages can often be overcome in hospitals with an immediate need, there is a steady decline in the availability of nurses as they digress into different occupations or don't even consider nursing as a viable career option" ("Nursing Shortage: The Evolving Nursing Shortage", n.d.).

Loretta Gall is a 66-year-old who has been a registered nurse since 1963. Loretta stated that she would have to work a few more years to earn more for her savings, something many of her peers are doing as well, putting off retirement. Another reason for putting off retirement is due to the lack of nurses in Florida to make up for the number of nurses who are ready to retire. In order to fix the nursing shortage problem, it will be helpful to broaden the nursing programs (Quintero, 2009). One of the major hurdles to the nursing shortage is not enough experienced nursing faculty available and the low salary (Quintero, 2009). “More than 12,000 qualified applicants were turned away from state nursing education programs in 2007-2008” (Quintero, 2009, para. 5). It is not due to not having enough nursing students; it is caused by the lack of nursing faculty that is prepared to teach. According to Anne Peach, vice president of nursing for Orlando Health "At the University of Central Florida, the nursing school is working with local community colleges to retrain nurses to work as teachers” (Quintero, 2009, para. 2). They also recruit from local hospitals...