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Biomedical subjects

P I Buerhaus

Publications and source records attributed to P I Buerhaus.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Implications of an aging registered nurse workforce.

CONTEXT: The average age of registered nurses (RNs), the largest group of health care professionals in the United States, increased substantially from 1983 to 1998. No empirically based analysis of the causes and implications of this aging workforce exists. OBJECTIVES: To identify and assess key sources of changes in the age distribution and total supply of RNs and to project the future age distribution and total RN workforce up to the year 2020. DESIGN AND SETTING: Retrospective cohort analysis of employment trends of recent RN cohorts over their lifetimes based on US Bureau of the Census Current Population Surveys between 1973 and 1998. Recent workforce trends were used to forecast long-term age and employment of RNs. PARTICIPANTS: Employed RNs aged 23 to 64 years (N = 60,386). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Annual full-time equivalent employment of RNs in total and by single year of age. RESULTS: The average age of working RNs increased by 4.5 years between 1983 and 1998. The number of full-time equivalent RNs observed in recent cohorts has been approximately 35% lower than that observed at similar ages for cohorts that entered the labor market 20 years earlier. Over the next 2 decades, this trend will lead to a further aging of the RN workforce because the largest cohorts of RNs will be between age 50 and 69 years. Within the next 10 years, the average age of RNs is forecast to be 45.4 years, an increase of 3.5 years over the current age, with more than 40% of the RN workforce expected to be older than 50 years. The total number of full-time equivalent RNs per capita is forecast to peak around the year 2007 and decline steadily thereafter as the largest cohorts of RNs retire. By the year 2020, the RN workforce is forecast to be roughly the same size as it is today, declining nearly 20% below projected RN workforce requirements. CONCLUSIONS: The primary factor that has led to the aging of the RN workforce appears to be the decline in younger women choosing nursing as a career during the last 2 decades. Unless this trend is reversed, the RN workforce will continue to age, and eventually shrink, and will not meet projected long-term workforce requirements. JAMA. 2000.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Slow growth in the United States of the number of minorities in the RN workforce.

PURPOSE: To assess the extent to which the number of minority RNs has grown during the past 20 years, and to identify and compare key trends in personal and professional characteristics among minority groups and between minority and majority populations of RNs. Nursing education programs, employers, philanthropic organizations, and governments have expended considerable effort and resources to increase the number of minorities in nursing. DESIGN: Longitudinal analysis of trends in the number, education, employment, and earnings of minority RNs from 1977 to 1997. METHODS: Descriptive analysis of data from the U.S. National Sample Surveys of the Population of Registered Nurses, 1977-1996; and data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census Current Population Survey (CPS) Outgoing Rotation Group Annual Merged Files, 1977-1997. FINDINGS: In the past 20 years, the number of minority RNs has grown from 87,386 (or 6.3% of the total supply of RNs) in 1977 to 246,364 RNs (9.7%) in 1996. The number of Black (nonHispanic), Asian Pacific/Islanders, and American Indian/Alaskan Native nurses nearly tripled in this period while the number of Hispancis doubled. Although these rates of growth are impressive, the percentage of minorities in nursing lags considerably behind the percentage (18.3%) who are teachers, and the percentage (28.2%) in the U.S. population. CONCLUSIONS: Studies are needed to determine the barriers that exist in nursing education programs, health care organizations, and society in general that deter minorities from a nursing career. Without this understanding, efforts to design and implement ideas to attract, educate, and retain minorities in nursing education and later in the workplace are hampered.

Humans↗
PubMed1999

Is a nursing shortage on the way?

Managed care, new technology, and treating more patients outside the hospital are among the factors that can induce a future nursing shortage.

Community Health Services↗
PubMed1997

Future of the nurse labor market according to health executives in high managed-care areas of the United States.

PURPOSE: To understand how the work environment of nurses is changing in states with high enrollment in health maintenance organizations (HMOs), the underlying forces driving change, and how these forces are expected to affect employment and earnings of nurses in the future. Financing and delivery systems that have developed in some states with high enrollment in HMOs are generally regarded as indicative of the future for all the United States. DESIGN: Survey in 1995 of a convenience sample of 62 health executives in 11 states with high enrollment in HMOs. Executives included officials in state governments, state and metropolitan hospital associations, professional and nonprofessional nursing associations, state boards of nursing, community and public health, home health care, nursing homes, other non-acute care associations, and leading HMOs. METHODS: Through structured telephone interviews, executives were asked about changes in nurse employment, earnings, collective bargaining, fringe benefits, nurses' roles, substitution of licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and aides for RNs, patient severity, quality of patient care, and expectations for nurse employment during the remainder of the decade. FINDINGS: Executives perceive a mostly positive and fast-changing nurse labor market but they are concerned about the aging RN work force, possible development of an RN shortage, and linking quality of patient care to the provision of nursing services. They doubt the ability of nurse educators to respond quickly to the need to prepare nurses for rapidly changing employer requirements. CONCLUSIONS: Public and private forces are causing rapid, profound changes in health care delivery and throughout the nurse labor market. These changes are most evident in the shift in employment of nurses from hospitals to home health. Despite anxiety associated with these changes, no evidence of an "employment disaster" exists in the views of health executives.

Administrative Personnel↗
PubMed1996

Managed care and the nurse workforce.

OBJECTIVES: To identify recent national trends in the employment and earnings of nursing personnel and determine whether managed care is associated with changes in the employment and wage growth of nursing personnel. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of trends in data on employment and earnings of nursing personnel based on monthly US Bureau of the Census Current Population Surveys between 1983 and 1994, and comparison of trends between states with high and low rates of enrollment in health maintenance organizations (HMOs). POPULATION: Registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and nurse aides/assistants, orderlies, and attendants (referred to collectively as aides) between the ages of 21 and 64 years. OUTCOME MEASURES: Full- and part-time employment, unemployment, percentage of nursing personnel employed in key sectors of the nurse labor market, and inflation-adjusted hourly wages. RESULTS: From 1983 through 1994, there was strong overall growth in both RN employment (37%) and inflation-adjusted wages (22%). Beginning in the early 1990s, however, RNs experienced stagnant wages and a small but steady shift toward employment in lower-paying nonhospital settings, particularly in home health care. In states with high HMO enrollment, RN and LPN employment has grown more slowly since 1990, and the shift of RN employment out of the hospital was strongest. For aides and LPNs, the shift out of hospital employment occurred years before that of RNs and at a much greater rate. Since 1990 the employment of aides has grown rapidly in nursing homes and in home health care settings, whereas employment of LPNs has shifted primarily into physician offices and nursing homes. Overall, the movement toward nonhospital employment has had a modest negative impact on wages for all nursing personnel. CONCLUSIONS: Managed care is associated with slower employment growth for RNs in hospitals and a shift toward employment in nonhospital settings, but its effect on earnings has been overshadowed by other forces impacting nurse wages.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

The Harvard Nursing Research Institute's conference summary.

The Harvard Nursing Research Institute organized a national invitational conference on executive nursing leadership in major teaching hospitals and academic health centers. The conference brought together many of the nation's eminent nurse executives and other prominent individuals in healthcare to analyze the unique and complex challenges facing these organizations, expose participants to other perspectives, and articulate specific aims and strategies that might be taken to increase their effectiveness in leading the nursing profession's efforts to shape the ongoing transformation of the healthcare system.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed1996

Nursing research: staying focused. Interview by Cheryl Slagle King.

APNQ interviews Peter I. Buerhaus, PhD, FAAN, Director, Harvard Nursing Research Institute, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, who advocates APNs involvement in validating their contribution to improving the health of the communities they serve; further education of employers and managed care organizations regarding the utility of APNs; evaluating the quality of these educational programs and the application of their practice; focusing research resources to gain maximum benefit for the nursing profession and patient populations.

Humans↗
PubMed1994

Capitalizing on the recession's effect on hospital RN shortages.

The recent economic recession and slow-paced recovery have contributed to dampening out the shortage of hospital-employed registered nurses (RNs), a shortage that has persisted since the mid-1980s. While national unemployment rates remain relatively high and continue to exert economic pressure on RNs to maintain high levels of employment activity, hospital and nurse executives now have an opportunity to make strategic investments in the organizational infrastructure supporting nursing because once the economy rebounds, RN shortages could easily resurface.

Career Choice↗
PubMed1991

Economic determinants of annual hours worked by registered nurses.

This study was guided by the economic theory of the decision to work, with secondary survey data (N = 16,880) derived from the National Sample Survey of the Population of Registered Nurses, November 1984, used to analyze the effects of economic and sociodemographic variables on the number of hours worked annually by registered nurses (RNs). When separate analyses were performed for the entire sample and for unmarried RNs alone, regression coefficients estimated for the RN's wage indicated that raising wages would result in modest increases in the number of annual hours worked. This effect was not present when either married RNs or those who were widowed, divorced, or separated were used in regression analyses. Male RNs worked 11 weeks more than married, female RNs, and nonwhite RNs worked almost 7 weeks more per year than white, married RNs. RNs with an associate degree in nursing worked more hours than those with a diploma certificate, and the presence of young children at home had a substantial negative effect on the number of hours RNs worked.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

What do Michigan RNs want?

Which is more important to your RNs--professional status or pay? The information in this article will help you attract and retain your share of highly skilled RNs in today's competitive market.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗