Some hospitals are not hiring new nurses, while others have reduced or eliminated the use of temporary or traveling nurses who once helped with the area's nursing shortage.
Caulk is one of the lucky ones. He is among 70 entry-level nurses hired by the VA over the past year. The federal hospital is no longer adding nurses, but the resumes and applications continue to pile up.
"We have been overwhelmed with applications since the end of September," Linda Weiler, the VA's nurse recruiter in Phoenix, said of the approximately 800 nurses who applied for positions at the teaching hospital. "We brought in another file cabinet just to store them all (applications)."
For years, surveys pointed to a dire need for new nurses in Arizona. Experts predicted the region's expected growth and aging nursing workforce would strain the region's ability to provide health care without a dramatic increase in new nurses. Arizona Healthcare Workforce Center issued a report last year forecasting the need to add 49,000 nurses in Arizona over the next nine years.
With an estimated one-third of the state's nurses age 55 or older, health-care experts say that the region still will face a shortage as nurses retire.
"Long term, there is a large demand for nurses," said Vicki Buchda, Mayo Clinic's vice chair, division of nursing. "We still have a large number of people moving into our state. We don't have the nurses to keep up with that demand."
Job market shifts>>> But the economy has put a damper on the immediate job prospects for some younger nurses. New graduates "are really having a hard time getting an entry-level job in hospitals," said Joyce Benjamin, executive director of the Arizona Nurses Association.
Benjamin said hospitals have been slow to hire inexperienced nurses in part because of the time and expense required to train them. New nurses need to be matched with mentors who can shadow them and offer advice.
