Hospitals innovate amid dire nursing shortages

Commenting on Nurses' conditions during COVID time Patricia Pittman, Ph.D., director of the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. explains: “There’s a feeling of betrayal by the society,”  “There’s incredible frustration that this was avoidable.” 

Health field leaders have been warning for years that hospitals face a nursing shortage. One widely cited study projects a shortfall of 510,394 registered nurses by 2030. The main reasons, according to such groups as the American Nurses Association, are waves of baby boomer nurses entering retirement age, an aging population that will require more medical care (and more doctors and nurses), faculty shortages that limit the capacity of nursing schools to accept more students, and more nurses moving away from direct patient care or leaving the health field altogether because of stress.

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