Peter Buerhaus, RN, PhD, a nurse economist from Vanderbilt School of Nursing, predicts that by 2020, because of increasing demands on health care by aging baby boomers, the nursing supply will fall short of demand by about 20 percent. The current shortfall of nurses may be a mal-distribution rather than an actual shortage. We've always had more providers in areas where there is less need.
Nurses are in shortest supply in rural areas and in nursing subspecialties, such as critical care.
Also it seems we have fewer and fewer resources to care for patients and families with increasing severity of need. Biotechnology is expanding so rapidly that we have experienced dramatic changes in clinical treatments and the disappearance of whole groups of in-patients to a variety of ambulatory services. We are a part of a national health care system believed by the public to be inefficient, overly expensive and unavailable to many Americans. When any environment changes so rapidly, it is difficult to feel secure in our work. It is difficult to feel confident that our knowledge base will be sufficient to meet the demands for new and better approaches to patient care.