Wen: How to address our nursing shortage? Start by valuing nurses more.

The Maryland Hospital Association released findings last month that 1 in 4 hospital nursing positions in the state were vacant. The association called the lack of nurses “the most critical staffing shortage in recent memory.” The same disturbing trend is mirrored across the United States. From 2020 to 2022, hospital vacancies for nursing positions nearly doubled. The total number of registered nurses in the workplace decreased by more than 100,000 in 2021, the largest drop observed in four decades. Perhaps most ominously, the group that left nursing in the highest numbers was nurses under the age of 35. Even before the pandemic, there was growing concern that the aging population would require more health-care services, and stress and burnout were leading nurses to leave the bedside.