NURSES: CALIFORNIA HOSPITALS FACE SHORTAGE

      Hospitals in California are facing a shortage of nurses, the
 San Francisco Chronicle reports.  The shortage is due to a
 "combination of factors," including a "surging economy [that] has
 brought more insured workers into the health care system,
 increasing the demand for nurses."  In addition, "the population
 of nurses has gotten older and many of them have retired or taken
 more attractive jobs elsewhere," while "training programs for
 nurses have fallen behind."  Nancy Carlson, an assistant director
 of divisional nursing at Kaiser Permanente, said, "In the Bay
 Area there is a general nursing shortage, especially in critical
 care, the emergency department, neonatal intensive care and labor
 and delivery."  Kaiser has hired 425 nurses in the past 45 days,
 while Catholic Healthcare West, which operates five hospitals in
 the Bay Area, "is about to offer employees a $500 cash bonus if a
 nurse they have referred is eventually hired" and is "dangling
 $1,000 sign-on bonuses for new hires."
      YOUR OWN FAULT
      "Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California
 Nurses Association, the union that represents Kaiser nurses" who
 have staged a series of strikes against the HMO, said that Kaiser
 is to blame for the shortage.  She charged the HMO with "driving
 nurses out of the profession by replacing them with lesser-
 skilled people and by making work conditions so tough that nurses
 quit."  However, Kaiser spokesperson Tom Debley said, "There is a
 nationwide nursing shortage, which is affecting Kaiser and
 everyone else" (Russell, 11/11).