The World of Nursing: What's Causing the Shortage? One of the few careers left in the United States that is said to be eternal, appears to be getting a taste of reality. What was once a thriving career began to steadily struggle against the call to arms. Hospitals around the world are finding that the need for nurses is increasing as new nurse graduates become scarce. Nursing schools are unable to produce enough new graduates to meet the need. This causes the need for adequate instructors with the necessary knowledge to educate nursing students. Even with the rate of nurses graduating each year with Bachelors and Associates, why do we have such a drastic need for nurses? Have the population and diseases increased so rapidly that our current nurses are unable to keep up? Many researchers have attempted to understand what might cause this need. This need for nurses is vital to patient care and outcomes, but consensus is still lacking. The question that has been asked since the 1980s without a solution. The medical community has changed since the 1980s, as have positions and tasks. Each position contains specific duties to assist with patient care and outcomes. Just like a pyramid, each position ranks higher than the other. The doctors are at their peak and supervise the patient's care. They make decisions based on the information given to them by nurses. The registered nurse (RN) is at the next level and communicates between doctors and support staff. Support staff, the final level, assist patients individually. This pyramid of positions changes depending on the specialty or facility in which an individual is employed and the patient's condition. One without the other is an impossible task... half paper... staff but reduce hours, so that staff are available when needed. Keeping staff available also reduces replacement costs. In an article by Kovner, Brewer, Greene and Fairfield “the estimated cost to replace a registered nurse is 1.2 to 1.3 times the salary of a registered nurse ranging from 40,000 to 65,000” (as cited in Edwards, 2011 ). The recession is also affecting patients too, with more and more people being laid off and having difficulty finding new positions. Fewer and fewer are seeking medical care, especially when there is no insurance to help with billing. With all over-the-counter medications, patients rely on Internet sites like WEB MD to diagnose and treat their symptoms. Ultimately leading hospitals to make difficult decisions about how to stay afloat in a crumbling economy. How are new graduates affected? ses would decrease.