The Virginia Hospital and Health Care Association conducted a survey of its members in 2000. The findings indicate that Virginia follows the national pattern for nursing vacancies, recruitment and retention. Nurse shortages have led hospitals to close beds, reduce admissions and surgeries and to divert patients from emergency rooms. Replacing a nurse takes an average of nearly three months and new graduates are being recruited to positions that were available only for experienced nurses in the past. Virginia hospitals lose about 18 percent of their registered nurses every year, which leaves some units perpetually understaffed.
Turnover is even greater in urban areas, where much of the population is transient.
Traditional measures of increasing student enrollment in schools of nursing, offering bonuses to nurses and even raising salaries are not enough to address the looming shortage. New ways of recruiting, educating and employing nurses are essential to meet the health needs of the citizens of the United States. Virginia s characteristics Virginia extends more than 400 miles from east to west and 200 from north to south. It is the 12th most populous state in the United States with more than six million people. Some counties have doubled in their populations in the last decade.