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COPYRIGHT 2001 Thomson Financial Inc.
This is the first of a series of articles relating to the nursing workforce shortage that Perspectives will publish periodically over the next several weeks.
Indiana University School of Nursing Dean Angela McBride has written an article on the nursing shortage for an alumni magazine. She's calling it "A Shortage of What?"
The quizzical title doesn't reflect skepticism that a shortage exists. Far from it, says McBride. The name reflects her certainty that to look at the current shortage as if it were the same as previous cyclical shortages that have appeared in the profession - as "a shortage of bodies" solvable by an infusion of scholarships and higher salaries - is to vastly, and potentially disastrously, misconstrue the situation.
Behind the current workforce shortage lurk other shortages, some straightforward, others more complex. There is a shortage of nursing students, nursing faculty, available places in some nursing schools; a shortage of financial and cultural support for nursing and of understanding that the issue may require systemic changes. There will be no shortage of patients as the Baby Boom generation worldwide ages and develops chronic ills. There is a shortage of solutions.
The signs are clear. Nursing school enrollments and graduations from many nursing programs have been...
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