KQED’s ‘The California Report’ Examines State Nursing Shortage
KQED's "The California Report" on Monday in the first of a two-part series examined the "hotly contested issue" of the state's nursing shortage as hospitals adapt to state rules stipulating that one nurse should care for no more than five patients in some hospital units as of Jan. 1, 2005.
KQED reports that the nurse shortage has lasted for about eight years -- longer than any shortage since World War II -- and that the situation will worsen with upcoming nurse retirements and baby boomers seeking health care. By 2030, the state will have a shortage of at least 100,000 nurses, according to the University of California-San Francisco Center for Health Work Force Studies, KQED reports.
The segment includes comments from:
- Victoria Bradshaw, head of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency;
- Karen Cox, director of management support at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center;
- Denise DeMoss, emergency department nurse manager at Long Beach Memorial;
- Lucy Huckabee, dean of nursing at California State University-Long Beach;
- Joanne Spetz, associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco Center for Health Work Force Studies; and
- Prospective nursing students in California.
The second segment in the series -- which is scheduled to air next week on KQED and is available online from KPCC, which ran the story in late July -- profiles a partnership between CSU-Long Beach and Long Beach Memorial to train more nurses (Baer, "The California Report," KQED, 8/8). The complete segment is available online in RealPlayer.
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