Cecily O'Connor
RedwoodAge.com

Healthcare facilities, already facing a surge in demand from aging boomers, have a new reason for concern: a nursing shortage.

Over one-third of boomer nurses plan to retire within three years, find a non-nursing job that is less stressful, work part-time, or work as travel nurses, according to a survey by AMN Healthcare, a health care staffing firm.

Without more nurses, "we will be hard pressed to meet the needs of baby boomer patients," said Marcia Faller, a nurse and executive vice president of AMN Healthcare.

Nursing isn't the only area of healthcare that's facing a shortage. Cardiothoracic surgeons also are in short supply, leaving positions in many US residency programs unfilled.

The survey, which includes responses from 830 nurses age 45 to 60, suggested that many of these medical professionals are facing career burn-out. 

About 46 percent said that working as a nurse has become less satisfying in the last five years, about twice the number who said nursing has become more fulfilling. Less than half said they would choose nursing as a career if they were starting out today, while about 48 percent said they would recommend nursing as a career to children and other young people.

No. 1 on the list of job frustrations was nurse staffing shortages, a problem that isn't likely to ease any time soon. The US nursing shortage is expected to grow worse as boomers age and the need for health care increases. 

Also problematic is the fact that enrollment in schools of nursing is not growing fast enough to meet the projected demand for nurses over the next 10 years, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Meanwhile, a significant portion of nurses in the workforce now are edging closer to retirement.

More than 1.25 million nurses in the US are between the ages of 45 and 60, Faller said. That means that if even 10 percent of these nurses retire or find non-nursing jobs in the next one to three years, over 125,000 nurses would be removed from the workforce.

Even as the nursing shortage persists, working conditions are improving, which could be an attractive retention tool going forward. About 58 percent of boomer nurses said that physicians being trained today are more respectful of nurses than are physicians who trained 10 or 20 years ago. Twenty-four percent said that newly trained physicians and older doctors are equally respectful of nurses.

"Positive working relations between nurses and physicians are key to promoting nurse retention," Faller said. "Improving these relations helps keep nurses in the clinical workforce."