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Health April 2012

Aid for Age

The Looming Nursing Shortage Not a Good Sign for Aging Boomers or Seniors

By Tait Trussell

The average age of the registered nurse is rising. It is figured to be age 44 this year. There also is a serious shortage of nursing faculty. Insufficient staffing is raising the stress level, impacting job satisfaction and driving many nurses to leave the profession.

Yes, nurses will be in short supply. The shortage may already be having an impact, as I’ll explain later in a personal case.

You have read about the dwindling number of doctors. The lack of RNs is “expected to intensify as baby boomers age and the need for health care grows,” says the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. The group is working with the schools, policymakers, the news media, and others to “bring attention to the health care crisis,” the association added.

Other contributing factors impact the nursing shortage. The average age of the registered nurse is rising. It is figured to be age 44 this year. There also is a serious shortage of nursing faculty. Insufficient staffing is raising the stress level, impacting job satisfaction and driving many nurses to leave the profession.

Most nurses I have known from my days in the Navy to the present have been skilled and dedicated. My brother’s wife was a nurse. In fact, one of my sons is in charge of nurses in the operating room of a large children’s hospital, where they are performing everything from repairing broken arms to neurosurgery.

My son added an RN to his BA degree after being an army captain, sports columnist, banker and a lobbyist. He changed occupations because his wife has a serious health condition and he wanted to know as much medical information as possible to care for her.

As in any other line of work, there are good nurses and not-so-good nurses, and even some that can’t quite be categorized. Let me explain.

The nurse bustled into my wife’s hospital room, adjusting her spectacles. My wife lay in the hospital bed steadying herself for the operation. I sat on the edge of a chair near her bed.

A dear friend and neighbor sat nearby (to prop me up in case I fainted dead away.)

The nurse chattered like a baby chick, providing small talk at about the intellectual level of a baby chick.

Shoving her glasses up her slippery nose closer to her eyes, the nurse squinted, looking for a vein in my wife’s arm to insert the needle leading to the hanging bag of “relaxation” that would help prepare the patient for the procedure. Soon, my spouse was carted off to go under the knife.

After a wait just short of eternity, my wife was rolled back into the room — the same round-faced, jolly nurse pushing her and still chattering.

After the appropriated reassurances that all went well in the operating room, the nurse shoved her glasses up closer to her eyes as she blandly acknowledged: “I’m blind in one eye. I stopped driving when I kept hitting buildings.”

Then — lowering her voice — she added in a secretive manner: “I never tell anyone until after I’m finished using sharp instruments.”

My wife, our friend, and I all peered cautiously at one another and, stifling guffaws, thanked the nurse and wished her well and a steady hand in her future.

A year or so ago, the Institute of Medicine released a landmark report on the future of nursing. It called for increasing the baccalaureate-prepared nurses in the workforce to 80 percent and doubling the number of nurses with doctoral degrees. The current nursing workforce falls far short of those recommendations. Only half of the RNs have any higher degree. But, as far as is known, nearly all of them have full eyesight.

 

Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

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