Hospital Speedups and the Fiction of a Nursing Shortage

In recent years, hospital managers and public policy makers alike have focused considerable energy on the prospect of an imminent national shortage of hospital nurses. In response, officials have urged both increased funding for nursing schools and increased importation of foreign nurses from the Philippines and other developing countries. The study below documents that this policy direction is fundamentally misguided. There is no shortage of nurses in the United States. The number of licensed registered nurses in the country who are choos-ing not to work in the hospital industry due to stagnant wages and deteriorating working conditions is larger than the entire size of the imagined "shortage. " Thus, there is no shortage of qualified person-nel—there is simply a shortage of nurses willing to work under the current conditions created by hospital managers. Extensive survey data among both currently working nurses and those who have lef