Hospitals are not the only health care organizations struggling to recruit staff.

Nursing homes, hospices and similar facilities all face the chronic shortage of nurses.

At Pleasant Valley Health Care Center, Sandy Sundquist, licensed practical nurse and assistant director or nursing, said nurses are free to choose the most attractive jobs.

“It just seems like the nurses in this area don’t want to come to work, or they expect a whole lot for nothing,” she said. “Because it is so competitive, they know that they can have less responsibility for more pay if they go somewhere else.”

The result is a very big challenge to get quality nurses, especially in a long-term care setting.

“The ones that we have who tend to stay with us longer, they’re very compassionate and very family-oriented,” she said. “I have found that a lot of times the staff members that make a quality nurse and stay longer in long-term care are the ones who have more responsibilities at home.”

Sundquist said age makes a lot of difference in attitude of nurses who stay.

“A lot of times they’re not the younger ones who have just graduated from school,” she said. “They’re usually the ones who already have a family. So usually it’s not the young teeny-bopper mentality that stays; usually it’s the one with responsibility.”

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the United States is in the midst of a nursing shortage that is expected to intensify as baby boomers age and the need for health care grows. Compounding the problem is the fact that nursing colleges and universities across the country are struggling to expand enrollment levels to meet the rising demand for nursing care.

Statistics from the AACN include:

• The shortage of registered nurses in the United States could reach as high as 500,000 by 2025, according to a report released by Dr. Peter Buerhaus and colleagues in March 2008.

• In a statement released in March 2008, The Council on Physician and Nurse Supply, an independent group of health care leaders based at the University of Pennsylvania, has determined that 30,000 additional nurses should be graduated annually to meet the nation's health care needs, an expansion of 30 percent over the current number of annual nurse graduates.

• According to the latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published in the November 2007 Monthly Labor Review, more than one million new and replacement nurses will be needed by 2016. Government analysts project that more than 587,000 new nursing positions will be created through 2016 (a 23.5 percent increase), making nursing the nation’s top profession in terms of projected job growth.