Not all states are shorthanded, but some cities within those states are shorthanded. If your particular city or hospital isn't short, that doesn't mean that every unit in the hospital is fully staffed. Short staffing shows up as nurses having higher than expected patient-to-staff ratios. Instead of an ICU nurse having 2 patients, they might have 3. Instead of a med-surg nurse having 4 patients, they have 6. Increasing workloads like this have significant impacts on patient mortality (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5922465/). In addition, hospitals and other providers are increasingly reliant on expensive travel nurses, putting further strain on healthcare finances.
The national average is 12.06 nurses/1000 residents.
Here are some of the examples of shortages, and some of them are in states that have decent numbers of nurses overall.
By 2022, there will be far more registered nurse jobs available than any other profession
Pre pandemic, UAB was operating at a 9% nurse vacancy rate – but added programs and units combined with COVID has brought that rate up to 14%. This is lower than the national average of 18.7%, according to Poe.
Local hospitals are still grappling with one of the worst nursing shortages they said they’ve ever seen... “[It’s] a huge, massive shortage for nursing across the U.S. … and it’s presenting a challenge,” Melissa Watson, Recruiting Manager for Covenant Health, said.
The only county in Missouri with enough health care professionals to serve its population is Platte County north of Kansas City. The remaining 113 counties in the state have a nursing shortage, according to a recent report in the Journal of Nursing Regulation.
"There’s a lot of burnout, a lot of stress,” said Jared Kosin, president of the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association. Many Alaska nurses who were older and more susceptible to severe illness from COVID-19 opted to retire early. Others left the profession altogether.