Current Nursing Shortage
Analysts of the current shortage agree that this shortage is different from previous ones. At a time when there is an increased demand for nurses skilled in the use of sophisticated patient care technology, the nurse workforce is aging faster than replacements can be educated by a professoriate that is itself graying (Hinshaw, 2001). Nurses are leaving the workplace, and in many instances the profession, in protest that mandatory overtime and high patient-to-nurse ratios result in unsafe patient care environments (Burger, 2002).