We have a lot happening at the moment –
Child Month, Mother's Day and the oft neglected International Day of
Nursing.

The latter is celebrated on May 12th
,which falls this year on Sunday.

The Pan American Health Organization
and the World Health Organization have sent out jointly a release we
have published today titled “Nursing staff are vital for making
progress towards universal health”.

The release says that today (Wed 8) at
the “launch of the Strategic Directions for Nursing in the Region
of the Americas, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) called
on countries to invest in nurses to improve their availability,
distribution and roles in order to advance towards universal health.

“Nursing staff represent the largest
health workforce, accounting for more than 50% of health workers.
Despite this, however, the lack of nurses in most countries in the
Region compromises the global goal of achieving health for all by
2030.

“Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, Director of
PAHO highlighted that “in many parts of the world, nursing
professionals are the first, and sometimes only, human resource in
contact with patients” and claims that “investing in nursing
enables advancing towards access and universal health coverage, which
will have a profound effect on global health and well-being.”'

Last year CNN published an article
under the banner “Nursing schools are rejecting thousands of
applicants – in the middle of a nursing shortage”.

The reason given is there aren't enough
classes to teach nurses.

In America, experienced nurses are
retiring at a rapid clip, and there aren't enough new nursing
graduates to replenish the workforce. At the same time, the nation's
population is aging and requires more care.

"It's really a catch 22
situation," said Robert Rosseter, spokesman for the American
Association of Colleges of Nursing. "There's tremendous demand
from hospitals and clinics to hire more nurses," he said.
"There's tremendous demand from students who want to enter
nursing programs, but schools are tapped out."

There are currently about three million
nurses in the United States. The country will need to produce more
than one million new registered nurses by 2022 to fulfill its health
care needs, according to the American Nurses Association estimates.

That's a problem.

The article goes on to say:

“In 2017, nursing schools turned away
more than 56,000 qualified applicants from undergraduate nursing
programs. Going back a decade, nursing schools have annually rejected
around 30,000 applicants who met admissions requirements, according
to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

"Some of these applicants
graduated high school top of their class with a 3.5 GPA or higher,"
said Rosseter. "But the competition to get into a nursing school
right now is so intense."

Because of the lack of openings,
nursing programs across the board -- in community colleges to
undergraduate and graduate schools -- are rejecting students in
droves.”

SOURCE:
https://money.cnn.com/2018/04/30/news/economy/nursing-school-rejections/index.html

I was not aware of this and I doubt
whether you are as it is not something that has been blazed around
the national world headlines. Perhaps we should start a fake news
story saying the Russians are behind it.

However, even if there were more
classrooms available there aren't enough teachers to teach. In 2018
there was a shortage of nearly 1,600 qualified teachers.

The sad thing is that nothing has
changed. Somehow I doubt the goal set by the PAHO of achieving
health for all by 2030 is not going to come close to being met.