[linsomniac]

As the husband of a nurse who left the profession ~a year pre pandemic, it's not entirely that there aren't enough nurses. It's more that there are not enough nurses because healthcare administration tries to pile on too many patients, and too few CNAs. Nurses are treated like cannon fodder.

This will, indeed, lead to having open nursing positions, but may not be as indicative of a lack of nurses as you think. It's entirely likely that those 350 open positions are currently filled by "travel nurses", making 3-5x the base salary, in which case it's more a case of those 350 positions being for people looking to take drastic pay cuts.

It's a situation the healthcare industry has fostered and it's coming home to roost, meanwhile politicians are getting involved to try to cap the nurses salaries.

And I'd put a tenner on much of the problems being rooted in the undervaluing of women's work.

[ejb999]

Traveling nurses are definitely part of the problem, (why wouldn't someone go for the much higher salary) - but more nurses causes that problem to go away - simple supply and demand.

From the The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) website:

>>>According to AACN’s report on 2021-2022 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, U.S. nursing schools turned away 91,938 qualified applications (not applicants) from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2021 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, and clinical preceptors, as well as budget constraints. <<<

Thats almost 100K potential nurses that were qualified to enroll, but there we no slots available for them.

[ftth_finland]

> Traveling nurses are definitely part of the problem, (why wouldn't someone go for the much higher salary)

Sounds more like being part of the solution. More traveling nurses equal more pay.

Eventually things will reach an equilibrium where base pay will rise enough to either attract more nurses back to the profession and/or make it profitable to train more nurses.

[linsomniac]

I understand you are saying that nurses are overworked because of there aren't enough nurses.

I don't think you are understanding that I'm saying that health care administration tends to staff at a level that overworks and undersupports nurses. Which causes many qualified nurses to leave the front-lines for nursing adjacent (one nurse friend is doing CPAP equipment rental) or leaving nursing entirely (my wife).

[ftth_finland]

Why aren’t more nurses opting to become traveling nurses?

[linsomniac]

A lot of them are. And those that are are making $125-175K/year. It does mean relocating, or adding 1-2 hours commute on top off a 12 hour shift (that typically takes more like 14 hours once you add shift handoff and finishing paperwork that you don't have time to do during your shift because you have double the optimal patient load and half the CNA support...

Nursing is a really tough career.

[ftth_finland]

Let me rephrase, why aren’t nurses quitting en masse to become traveling nurses?

If you are going to be miserable at work, at least be miserable and well paid.

Why is there a need to relocate or commute as a traveling nurse?

If there is a national nurse shortage, why cannot you be a traveling nurse locally?

[ejb999]

>>why aren’t nurses quitting en masse to become traveling nurses?

because by definition, traveling nurse...travel. Yes you might get a gig for a while in your local hospital, but what happens when that ends? If you are young and/or single and don't own a house or locked into a 12-month lease, sure you can just pickup and move to the next place across the state or across the country - but if you are like most people, perhaps own a home, have a spouse with a local job and perhaps more importantly, kids in a local school system - it is very hard to just keep packing up and moving 2-3 times a year.

It is not for everyone.