Prerequisites for having enough nurses include the availability of good jobs and professionally rewarding working conditions and career opportunities. DeKeyser-Ganz and Toren’s research suggest that there are neither enough jobs for nurses in hospitals since workloads are high, nor professionally rewarding enough working conditions. Both of these limitations—not enough jobs and not good enough professional working conditions—need to be solved before enough Israelis will be interested in becoming nurses.
Other changes, more cultural in nature, are also needed as reflected in national interest in medicine as a career in Israel but not so much in nursing. The USA is a good example of how nursing can be transformed into a more attractive career choice with startling results. Nursing in the USA is now among the most popular career choices with over 30,000 qualified nurse applicants turned away from admission to nursing schools each year. Graduations from nursing schools have doubled over 20 years, and most nurses pay for their own education. Many nursing school applicants have university degrees in other fields, and are beginning new careers in nursing. The Gallup public opinion poll consistently shows that nurses rank highest in the public’s trust among all occupations including doctors. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences recently called for nurses to have expanded roles in clinical care and leadership roles in redesigning and managing health care services. The shift in nurses’ prospects in the USA came about as a result of national efforts to more accurately portray to the public through mass media the importance of nurses. Informing the public about nurses’ contributions to their health and safety was helped by the establishment of the National Institute of Nursing Research within the National Institutes of Health that supported nursing outcomes research which has been published in leading interdisciplinary scientific journals and covered widely by the media.