STAT October 16, 2023
Hospitals are frustrated with a nationwide nursing shortage that’s only gotten worse since the pandemic. In 2022, the American Hospital Association quoted an estimate that half a million nurses would leave the field by the end of that year, bringing the total shortage to 1.1 million.
At the same time, National Nurses United insists there isn’t a nurse shortage at all. There are plenty enough nurses for the country, they say — merely a shortage of nurses who want to work under current conditions.
So who is wrong?
Experts told STAT that everyone — including patients who are frustrated that they’re not getting proper nursing care — is a little bit right, though not in the way they...