With the nursing shortage in full gear everybody wants to be a nurse. It may surprise you that there are tens of thousands of qualified nursing students being turned away from nursing schools throughout the county. There just isn’t enough faculty to teach the incoming students adding the ever growing shortage of qualified nursing predicted to be over 250,000 by the year 2025.
Since 1990 the Southern Regional Education Board (SERB) has warned that the current nursing shortage and shortage of nurse educator is at critical levels. A clear example of this is in South Carolina where despite having 24 undergraduate nursing schools, there is a nursing shortage in the hundreds with a 50% dependency on out of state nurses. One of the main problems facing nursing schools is the lack of funding needed to be able to train the required amount of nurses.
With the newly passed healthcare reform bill and an estimated 30 million soon to access to affordable healthcare, nursing schools will have an even larger strain as the demands for nurses with create an even larger shortage of nursing students. In order to accommodate the million seeking healthcare more nurse educators have to be found and more quality nursing students have to be educated to keep up with healthcare demands.
Source: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/apr/03/03brinson/
