Health & Medical Newswire

According to The U.S. Department of Labor’s March 2008 Employment Summary reports, employment in the health care sector continues to grow, adding 360,000 jobs during the past 12 months. The Labor Department estimates employment of registered nurses will grow 23 percent from 2006 to 2016 and the country will need 500,000 new RNs by 2016.

“I’ve been a nurse since 1969 and have experienced different economic up and down turns,” said Linda Norman, DSN, RN, FAAN, senior associate dean for academics at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville, Tennessee. “There has always been a sustained need for nurses and a shortage of nurses.”

“Nursing not only is a recession-proof profession but it is one that has multiple opportunities,” Norman added. “The value of nursing is being appreciated throughout the health care industry.”

“The number of nurses who graduated has gone up during the last 40 years, but, the interesting piece is the demand for nurses also has increased,” Norman said. “Nursing programs have had difficulty keeping up with the demand.”

Pat Witzel, RN and chief nursing officer at Strong Memorial Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center located in New York, stated, “Nursing is not generally affected by the economy. People becoming ill or needing health care services is not dependent on what happens economically.”

The average age of a nurse  is almost 50 years with many possibly retiring soon.

“The workforce will be consistently losing nurses during the next five, 10, 15 years, and those nurses will need to be replaced,” said Hila Richardson, director of the undergraduate, continuing education and community health programs at New York University (NYU) College of Nursing.

Nursing jobs  and travel nursing  will always be in demand because people will always need medical care, however schools are just not producing enough nurses.