Problems Facing the Nursing Profession

Abstract

The nation's hospitals, many of which are struggling in a new environment of prospective payment, reduced demand for their inpatient services, and increasing competition from physicians in ambulatory settings, have a new problem to confront: a shortage of registered nurses, the largest single professional discipline of the medical care delivery system. With a suddenness that surprised even long-time observers of cyclic shortages of nurses, the demand for registered nurses is outstripping the supply, and the factors that add up to this shortage suggest that there is no quick solution to the problem.The nursing shortage stems from a variety of . . .