Shortage of Nurses Is Due to Recession

By Emily Wood, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY – It's projected that many nurses will be needed by 2025 due to recent shortages in the field.

Even with that need, some qualified applicants are being turned away from the classroom.

Oklahoma City University has not had to turn away any qualified applicants yet, but it's one of many schools overfilled with nursing students.

Now, even those who do get into school and graduate are having a tougher time finding work. A survey done by the National Student Nurses Association found 44 percent of R.N. graduates never found jobs last year. Those numbers are thanks to the recession.

Sally Cook is training to become a pediatric nurse at the Kramer School of Nursing at OCU.

"I am banking on a job when I graduate in an Oklahoma hospital," Cook said.

There was once a time when new nurses could choose between multiple job offers.

"Employers were eager for students, in the building recruiting, offering sign-on bonuses," Dean of the Kramer School of Nursing at OKCU Dr. Marvel Williamson said.

But the recession changed that. As the economy slumped, so did aging nurses' retirement plans.

And RNs who hoped to retire, stayed on. And 64-year-old Mary Diane Steltenkamp is one of them.

"I don't quite know how much longer I'll have to work, more than likely it'll be beyond 66," Staltenkamp said.

Steltenkamp works for a local parish. She enjoys helping others, but didn't expect to be doing it into her late 60s.

"It would be really nice to not have to work full-time or get up at the same hour," Staltenkamp said.

Williamson says the recession has made it tougher for grads to get jobs.

But nurses are still in high demand and that demand is growing.

"As the recession starts to lift, people will again leave the work force for their preferred lifestyle," Williamson said.

Even though there aren't as many nursing jobs as there used to be, faculty at the Kramer School of Nursing expect the industry to keep growing though 2025. They are building a new complex so they can prepare more students to help with the shortage.

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the workforce is expected to be short at least 260,000 nurses by 2025. And experts say with the new national health care plan, that number could be even greater.

"When you need a nurse there may not be one available," Williamson said.

Williamson says part of the problem is finding faculty to staff the schools.

"We know in the next 5-10 years half of our professors in nursing are retiring," said Williamson. "We're going to lose half of our teaching work force."

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing reports U.S. nursing schools were forced to turn away 50,000 qualified applicants in 2009. That's why the expansion project is so important. New OCU grads will go on to fill gaps in local facilities.

It may be a bit tougher for nurses to find jobs, but teachers are telling students things will get better.

"As a new grad, I would say I am very flexible, wherever I can find a job is where I'll start," Cook said.

Experts say that flexibility is the key for new nurses. There are still jobs out there, just maybe not the exact job and the exact shift they want right away. 

That new facility at OCU is set to open in December of 2011.