The nationwide nurse shortage is impacting everyone, including patients and the health care system. Nurses say this is going to get worse as time goes on. It’s a fast-growing occupation, but the demand is outweighing the supply.
“You realize how short life is and you want to do the most you can with the time you have, ” said Covenant Health nursing student Luke Sneed, “and I believe nursing is a good way to do great things.”
He’s close to finishing school, and this is something he’s wanted to do all his life.
“My mom. She was a nurse when I was a kid, and I just wanted to help people,” Sneed said.
But there’s more to it than just that. It’s a lengthy process of school and clinicals.
“It’s not a pretty job,” he said.
Even with the high demand of nurses, getting into school is tough. There’s a generational gap, so there aren’t enough teachers.
“We have to turn away people from nursing school who want to go, and it’s between 10-20 percent that we turn away,” said Darla Smith, faculty affairs coordinator of Covenant School of Nursing. She’s also the president of the Texas Nurses Association District 18.
With a lack of nurses, it could mean less time they can spend on patients.
“You may possibly see other medical professionals like paramedics or other ones that are replacing nurses because we’re short of them at facilites,” said Smith.
The average age of working registered nurses is between 47 and 50 years old. Those nurses are retiring soon. Smith said in the next 5 years, we’re going to need 35,000 more faculty members across the nation
“It’s not just about data or that it’s another person. It’s that personal touch. That we have that makes it different from any other field that we have,” Smith said.
