A Perspective on the History of the Nursing Shortage

After reading through the New York Times archives, it became evident to me that nursing shortages have been around for a very long time, possibly since the beginning of nursing. A number of shortages took place from 1873-1970, and I specifically chose an article that addressed the shortage of nurses during the 1960’s. At this time, report on the nursing shortage was performed by the Medical Society of the County of New York. The physicians offered some solutions to the nursing shortage. One solution is that nursing programs should by expanded by 10 to 12 percent per year over a ten year period. They recommend this to be done in hospital based schools, rather than colleges, so that the student nurses can begin to work at the hospitals. (Haily, 1960) As the head of the committee, Dr. Willam A. Cooper rebuts later in a letter to the editor, “While all can agree that in Utopia every nurse should and would have a degree from college, that day has not arrived.” (Cooper, 1960)

Another recommendation he offers is to relax the regulation that nurse educators must have a bachelors of science degree in order to teach nursing students until the shortage is rectified. In an open letter to Dr. Cooper, Louise McManus, a nursing educator, remarked that the shortage was due to the fact that women now had many more career choices and lowering the standards “would only make recruitment more difficult and lead to greater attrition than exists today.” (Haily, 1960) Another remarked that, “We must make nursing a real profession, not just a bed-making, back-rubbing job.”

While Dr. Cooper was addressing the issue at hand at that moment, the nurse educators and the NLN were looking at the whole picture. Lowering standards may supply people in the hospitals to fill the vacancies, but by lowering the standards, the field of nursing would be going backwards. In my view, the physician and his team did not see the role of nursing as a profession, and did not respect the profession. Would he expect medical schools to lower their standards if there was a shortage? What about the public – would they want the standards lowered?

It is interesting to find how far we have come and also how much we have not changed. Nursing shortages have been around, probably since the beginning of nursing. As I glanced through other articles addressing the nursing shortage from 1873 through the 1990’s, there appeared to be issues that kept persisting. Some issues I noticed were the image of nurses, the oppression of nurses by the hospitals and doctors, low pay and long hours, and lack of desire to pursue a career in nursing. Of course, these issues still exist today. Another interesting note was that they found most shortages were regional, as they are today.

References:

Hailey, F. (1960, July 4). Nurse shortage still acute here. The New York Times. Retrieved September 25, 2006 from ProQuest database.

Cooper, W.A. (1960, July 26). Letter to The Times: For more nurses. The New York Times. Retrieved September 25, 2006 from ProQuest Database.