Nursing School Requirements Change as Applicants Outnumber Places
As the recession continues to bite and with a known long term shortage for qualified nurses many people have turned to get trained in this field only to find there are no college places available.
As demand has grown for people to study a degree course in nursing the places available in most nursing schools across the country hasn’t so demand has far outstripped supply and now the nursing school requirements have had to increase because of lack of places. Many perfectly qualified people are now being turned aways from colleges because there simply are not enough places.
High Salary and Demand for Nurses Continues
There are currently two main issues with qualified nurses in the US – firstly there is an aging process going on in the industry where many nurses are now near retirement age so we need new people to fill the gap left behind. Then there is the aging population in general who are living much longer and therefore are more likely to require hospital treatment. As these trends continue it’s estimated that there might be a shortfall of up to 260,000 nurses by 2020 – hard to believe we know but these are the statistics put out by the center for interdisciplinary health workforce studies and the federal government statistics put this nearer to 1 million.
More people are also thinking about this as a career because the average starting salaries are near to $60,000 per year which is a great deal more than flipping burgers and you are in a great caring profession.
What’s Happened so Far ?
Well if you read in the news at all you’ll see that many colleges and nursing schools are reporting over subscriptions to their programs and a recent survey suggests that in 2008 over 50,000 potential and perfectly qualified people did not get a place on a nursing course because there simply weren’t the places or facilities to undertake practical treatments.
In fact in the Plattsburgh state nursing program for fall 2010 over 960 people applied for the program but it only has 55 places available to students. This is an ever increasing trend from previous years in this state alone as the applicant figures have increased from 581 in 2008 and 656 in 2009 so a nursing career is hot in demand right now (and rightly so).
Lack of Facilities Produces Poor Results ?
There are over 3,000 accredited nursing courses in the US with over 200,000 students taking the exam each year (that figure was for the whole of 2009) but last year just under 72% achieved a pass rate for an RN degree (as per the national council of state boards of nursing for the NCLEX examinations). The percentage pass rate has slightly increased from previous years but this means there is still a failure rate of 30%. Although there is no particular reason for this perhaps the actual training and standards need to change so that those actually being accepted onto course will achieve a pass rate at the board examinations.
It’s a real shame that people either take scholarships or grants or even fund this long course themselves and then don’t achieve their goals especially with such a nursing shortage and the number of places far less than those applying but with the nursing school requirements only to increase as the years progress there needs to be a change so that only the best candidates can be accepted so that the pass rate increases and the nursing shortage is just something we all write about this year alone.