Nursing Shortage Worries Experts

May 18, 2001 — -- Push that call button at the hospital, and you might have to wait 45 minutes or longer for a nurse to show up. The problem is too many patients and too few nurses.

It could get a lot worse, government officials say.

With the number of new nurses getting state licenses barely rising — and demand for nurses soaring because of an aging population and the popularity of home health care — the Labor Department projects a shortage of 450,000 nurses in just seven years.

"We have a problem of attracting people into this profession that we probably haven't had in the past," said Janet Heinrich, a director focusing on public health issues for the U.S. General Accounting Office, which released a report this week to a Senate subcommittee investigating the nurse shortage.

The situation has the federal government looking for new methods and incentives to recruit nurses and nurse's aides, and state governments mulling limits on nurse overtime to increase job satisfaction. Some hospitals are offering perks like cash signing bonuses and child care. One desperate hospital in Indianapolis last year even offered nurses maid or lawn service for signing.

But will it be enough?

Heinrich said surveys have shown that a majority of nurses love nursing, but feel drained by perceived longer hours, bigger workloads and a sicker pool of patients created by shorter hospital stays.

A survey in March of more than 900 current and former nurses by the Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals suggests the Labor Department shortage estimate could be a low one. Federation spokeswoman Janet Bass told ABCNEWS Radio that one in five nurses who are working in hospitals and clinics said they are going to leave nursing within the next five years.

"They're miserable, because of the working conditions," she said. "They are stressed out. They can't take the physically demanding nature of the job anymore."

Even though she loves nursing, Julie Ginther says she may pack it in.