Nursing shortage to continue, Purdue professor says

A Purdue University professor says the current shortage of nurses across the United States is going to remain a big issue for the next decade.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of registered nurses is expected to grow to 3.3 million in 2032, an increase of about 177,000 nurses compared with 2022; that’s in conjunction with a projected 193,000 job openings for RNs through the same period.

Pengyi Shi, an associate professor in the supply chain and operations management group at the Daniels School of Business, said there are multiple factors contributing to the shortage.

“Many baby boomers are going to retire, and they have increasing medical needs. This need is not going to disappear. So the demand side is going to keep on increasing,” Shi said. “On the other hand, on the supply side, the nursing school enrollment has been at a relatively stable rate, so we’re not going to see huge expansion on the amount of a nurse supply.”

Shi added that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the nursing shortage as many nurses chose to quit their jobs due to a high workload and burnout.

The ongoing shortage, Shi noted, has had a big impact on both patient outcomes and nurse well-being. She said the desired patient-to-nurse ratio is one nurse for four or five patients, but a higher ratio can lead to fatigue among nurses.

“This is when the quality of care decreases,” Shi said. “Also, nurses are human beings. They tend to make more mistakes when they’re taking care of too many patients. And this may also translate into a longer length of stay in the hospital, higher readmission and also more harm events.”

Shi said while the shortage isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, there is room for optimism. She noted that many state governments have recognized the issue and are putting more funding and incentives toward boosting enrollment in nursing schools.

A tool co-developed by Shi and Jonathan Helm at Indiana University is also working to help alleviate the shortage as well. Shi said the Delta Coverage internal travel nursing program uses mathematical modeling and artificial intelligence to help utilize existing nurses more efficiently.

“With the same number of nurses, we can use AI to forecast what the hospital needs. So we can actually place them into the hospital or units that need the nurses the most,” she said. “In a way we can do more with our existing nurses.”