The Future of Nursing
Looking toward the future, it is clear that the need for nurses will continue to increase. As the baby boomers age, they will need nursing care. More people will live longer with more chronic illnesses. Hospitals will continue to discharge patients early. People will want to try and stay out of extended care facilities and get home nursing, but many will winded up in extended care. Nurses will help them at every step of the way.
The employment rate for licensed vocational nurses is growing faster than average. There is expected to be a 14% growth in LPN jobs between 2006 and 2016. The future job market looks good, but does vary from place to place. In some areas, LPNs are working less in hospitals, but more in outpatient surgi-centers, as doctors shift to doing procedures out of hospitals. In other areas of the country, more vocational nurses are being hired for hospital work.
Across the board, though, more LPNs will be needed in home health care as well as in extended care facilities, for the same reasons that more RNs will be needed.
In 2006, the United States Department of Labor also predicted that there would be 587,000 more registered nurses by the year 2016. This is one of the largest increases projected in any job field. Of course, the job availability will vary by state and specific type of nurse needed. While the recession may have slowed some of this growth down, it will pick up again as the economy recovers. Even during the recession there have been new nursing jobs.
In 2008, the Department of Labor says that there were 730,500 licensed vocational nurses working in the United States. There are expected to be 854,000 in 2016. In 2008 there were 2,543,760 registered nurses working in the U.S. There are expected to be 3,092,000 registered nurses in 2016.
The new nurses will be needed to replace older nurses who are retiring, and nurses who are receiving more training and going into other jobs. There will also be more people needing nursing care, as explained.
There is another nursing trend that will continue into the future. Nursing groups are advocating an increase in education for nurses. Many believe that the patients and public would be better served by having more well-educated nurses and different standards in nursing education. This would mean that RNs should all have bachelor's degrees. LPNs in the workforce should go back to school and train to become RNs in LPN-to-RN programs. RNs without BSNs could go back to school to get their bachelor's degrees. Since these would be working nurses, the idea is that employers might be willing to help pay for further education.
People interested in nursing with bachelor's degrees in other subjects can already take accelerated nursing training in which their bachelor's degree "counts" and they can become RNs in a shorter period of time. They can also go into master's programs to become nurses. This is a relatively new path to becoming a nurse.
Registered nurses can already become advanced practice nurses. Right now, it takes a master's degree to be a nurse practitioner, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife, or clinical specialist. In the next ten years or so, the training programs will be shifting toward doctoral degrees. While no nurses already in practice will have to go back to school for this, new applicants who want to become nurse practitioners will be getting doctorates. This is to put them on an even footing with other health care practitioners from dentists to pharmacists who all get doctorates as their terminal degree.
There is a shortage of nurse educators, so that nurses with advanced degrees who want to teach have very good job prospects. In fact, there will not be a new crop of vocational nurses or registered nurses without nurse educators.
The future of the nursing profession does look very bright, with more jobs, and more opportunities on the horizon.
Published: 2009-10-14
