Who Will Care for Us? The Impending Shortage of Healthcare Providers

MEL Talks at Meliora Weekend 2013 -- Saturday, October 12 in the Louis Alexander Palestra
Kathy Rideout, Dean and Professor of Clinical Nursing
The shortage of primary care providers in some parts of the United States is expected to worsen as more than 30 million newly insured Americans gain coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Dean Rideout discusses how nurse practitioners, urgent care centers, and other providers might step up to avert this looming crisis.

[@smoothvelvetsinger]

Hello Kathy. Very interesting monologue, thanks for sharing this with us. I`m a US citizen with a nursing degree from Norway. I`m a male and I have worked in healthcare for 25 years, I`m 45 years old now. I grew up in Norway and I have been interested in a nursing career in the US for years now. Me and my family moved to the US in 2010, subsequently I began my nurse licensing process. Unfortunately this process took some time due to delays by the university in Norway. I did however, apply for literally hundreds of healthcare positions with no education required while waiting, just to have a temporary income while working on my license. I never had a single offer for a job, not even as a patient transporter. What did I do wrong? I never was unemployed in my life, that is until I decided to try to find employment in the US. There are a multitude of articles online saying that there is no nursing shortage in most places in the US, and that millions of nurses are unemployed. I can`t make sense of this, because at the same time I read articles suggesting the contrary. Do you have any suggestions as to how you would proceed in my situation, as I`m interested in pursuing a career in the US this autumn? After all, I am a US citizen and my English is fluent. And I have a lot of healthcare experience.

[@ilmareofthemaiar]

How are you doing now?

[@watersignwater]

i worked at various hospitals and basically i was treated like crap and the administrators and supervisors are psyhopathic, co-workers are back stabbers plus you get paid like crap and in this country people don't respect you so i can see why no one wants to be a nurse nor a nursing aide. plus we don't have universal care, so i also saw a lot of elitism in that the wealthy were treated better than the poor it is our fault because we caused this they will NEVER fill the quotas and you will always be short because we are treated like crap