Some Causes of Nursing Shortage

Many hospitals around the nation are fighting the nursing shortage. To make it even worse, it is calculated that over 42K qualified students were turned away from nursing schools in the 2006 to 2007 school year because there wasn't enough space to take them. Now we start to see where the real bottleneck is.

There are two main reasons for not producing enough nurses according to Patrcia Doplhin, associate dean of Univ of Oklahoma's College of Nursing. One is that the average age of nurses are almost 50 which means many of them are retiring. This also means many schools lose many faculty members in the next five years.

Another reason is that nursing is less attractive to females now than it was in the past thanks to more options. However, people still believe nursing is an attractive career option.