Utah nursing shortage has become an oversupply

SALT LAKE CITY — Patients might see Sheli Craven as a veteran nurse, but she's one of the new kids on the block at Riverton Hospital, and she couldn't be happier. As she finished nursing school in March, she wondered if she could even find a job.

A good share of her fellow nursing graduates are still searching.

Two years ago, a nationwide nursing shortage meant all graduates had multiple job offers, many with hefty wages and lucrative signing bonuses.

Today, after nursing programs rushed to expand and new ones popped up to meet the demand, there are more nursing graduates than ever, but fewer jobs. The recession forced part-time nurses back to full-time work, and older nurses postponed retirement. Now many of them can't afford to leave.

Translation: What had been a dire shortage has become an oversupply, not only in Utah, but nationwide.

"I wasn't aware of the dynamic while going to school until about the last nine months," said Craven, a 52-year-old mother and grandmother, who decided on a midlife career change six years ago after caring for her critically ill mother before she died.

Word of a tight job market started trickling down within the hospital, where she was working as a CNA while going to school full time.

"I heard other nurses talking as I was doing my clinicals that there isn't a shortage anymore, and you'll have a hard time finding a job," Craven said. "I was pretty concerned," particularly after having left a lucrative career in retail sales and taking a major pay cut to go back to school.

Craven spent four years preparing — two each at Salt Lake Community College and Utah Career College. She started to wonder whether all of the hard work would pay off.

That concern is growing for many recent graduates, who didn't realize the job market was evaporating as they sat in class.

Diane Forster Burke, a professor of nursing at Westminster College, watched the nursing shortage push publicly funded colleges and universities to expand their programs a few years back. While it made sense then, "there aren't any nursing jobs, particularly for new graduates, right now," she said.

In addition to the financial issues that forced many nurses back to full-time work, fewer people are utilizing hospital services, particularly elective surgeries, she said. "Now, you don't do that unless you're bleeding."