National Nurses Week | ULM Forum 05-03-2013

National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as National Nurses Day, through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. This is a time to honor nurses and their commitment to the public. This is also a time to look at how fast the nursing is growing especially in the southern United States. 

On March 9, 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that job growth in the healthcare sector was outpacing the growth realized in 2011, accounting for one out of every 5 new jobs created this year.

 

According to the “United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast” published in the January 2012 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality, a shortage of registered nurses is projected to spread across the country between 2009 and 2030. In this state-by-state analysis, the authors forecast the RN shortage to be most intense in the South and the West.

 

With the average age of RNs projected to 44.5 years by 2012, nurses in their 50s are expected to become the largest segment of the nursing workforce, accounting for almost one quarter of the RN population.

 

A report by the Louisiana Canter for nursing entitled New Graduate Survey: Finding Employment in Louisiana as a Newly Licensed RN (2013), revealed that 94% of the 1,137 newly licensed registered nurses were able to find employment as an RN.

 

Emily Doughty, Director of the ULM’s Kitty DeGree School of Nursing, says that 98% of nursing graduates from ULM will find a job in the nursing field.