Social Science Research Network:  Understaffing of nurses in US hospitals is severely impacting the quality of healthcare and is predicted to worsen in future years.  By the year 2020, the nursing workforce is projected to be nearly a million nurses short.  The current nurse pool is retiring and the number of new nurses entering the profession is inadequate.  At the same time an aging baby boomer population will need to be cared for as they reach old age.

We link to the Abstract

The U.S. healthcare system is pinched by a persistent nursing shortage that threatens the quality of patient care even as tens of thousands of people are turned away from nursing schools, according to experts.

The shortage has drawn the attention of President Barack Obama. During a White House meeting on Thursday to promote his promised healthcare system overhaul, Obama expressed alarm over the notion that the United States might have to import trained foreign nurses because so many U.S. nursing jobs are unfilled.

Democratic U.S. Representative Lois Capps, a former school nurse, said meaningful healthcare overhaul cannot occur without fixing the nursing shortage. “Nurses deliver healthcare,” Capps said in a telephone interview.

For more information on the pinch:
Read this story from Yahoo! News

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