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New Nurse Workforce Data

The US Department of Health and Human Services just released "Initial Findings from the 2008 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses." There is some valuable and interesting information in the latest report (the last one was done in 2004).

Of note:

  • There were an estimated 3,063,163 living in the US as of March 2008 (of these, 2,596,599 were employed in nursing positions).
  • The average age for all licensed nurses rose from 46.8 to 47 years and employed nurses rose from 45.4 to 45.5.
  • There are 158, 348 identified NPs
  • The number of NPs grew 12.1% over the last 4 years
  • There were an estimated 28,369 RNs with a doctoral degree in 2008. This is an increase of 64.4% since 2000.
  • The workforce is becoming more diverse. 6.6% of nurses are male (a small jump from 5.8%) but a higher percentage of recent graduates were male from previous (4.1 % prior to 1990 vs. 9.6% since 1990).
  • Hispanics are the most rapidly growing group of registered nurses.
These are just a few highlights from the report. I highly recommend that you review the report to review the data. It is important to recognize and understand the composition of the largest collective group of health care providers in the U.S. After all, these individuals will be among those caring for America.
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Comments

Liza said…
Hi Stephen,

Great blog- it's very informative. I just wanted to leave a comment and let you know that we're currently having a competition for best Nurse Blogs at Lydia's Uniforms and we've selected A Nurse Practitioner's View as one of our top 25. Feel free to stop by and vote here: http://blog.lydiasuniforms.com/blog/lydias-uniforms/0/0/top-nurse-blogs-cast-your-vote Best of luck!
March 19, 2010 at 10:52 AM
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