There would still be if it took years to get a nursing certification and essentially everyone with one was already employed. I can't just decide that I'm a nurse tomorrow and start on Monday, no matter what they pay.
If you never fixed the criterial pipeline sure you would have a temporary shortage because that was your bottleneck. But there are plenty of people with equivalent skills, past or military experience that could do the job or be trained quickly to do it. It’s just a lack of desire to actually deal with the problem