The United States is in an incredibly dangerous nursing shortage, leaving hospitals understaffed and overworked. The lack of willing and able American nurses forces hospitals to leave many former nursing duties to lower-paid, less-trained individuals. Unfortunately, a lack of training has a direct correlation to patient illness, infection, and mortality rates. Our patients need trained nurses, and they need them now.

If we’ve been recognizing the huge nursing shortage for years, why are we still in the shortage?  What’s causing this nursing crisis, anyway? Unfortunately, the answer is varied– and not easily solvable.

Leading Causes of the Nursing Shortage

1. Education issues. There’s certainly no shortage of nursing school applicants in the United States. However, most nursing schools don’t have the space or faculty to accept more students. Nurses rarely go into teaching because those who teach earn a lower salary than their practicing counterparts. In addition, nursing faculty are paid less than faculty in other college disciplines. There’s a woeful lack of funding for American nursing education funding.
2. An aging and growing population. People will always get sick. When we have more people on the planet, we have more patients in our hospitals. Likewise, the elderly have more medical needs than younger patients, which means even more patients swarming a medical system already operating at max capacity.
3. Burnout. We have an overwhelming amount of nurses in the country who aren’t practicing due to burnout. Nurses are overworked and underpaid; they’re being stretched too thin. Registered nurses often quit when they feel disrespected or underappreciated– or when they see dangerous practices in hospitals caused by nurse understaffing.