Letter: Recruit, train needed nurses

Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2002 | 8:42 a.m.

Thank you for publishing the Jan. 14 story, "New hospitals face staffing woes." I agree that we must find ways to counteract the future problems we may face with all the new hospitals and no professional nursing staff to run them.

As stated in the article, we are steadily growing and so is our need for more professionals in the health care field to run these new facilities. There are five new hospitals under construction across the valley and a sixth one under consideration for construction.

During this time, while our new hospitals are under construction, it would be nice to see more educational programs geared toward professional nurses in the hope that these new graduate nurses become professionals, putting us closer to that 662 additional nurses needed each year through the year 2008 to accommodate our new hospitals, as predicted by the Hospital Association.

Therefore, if the hospital and the nurses' association, along with its administrators, are successful in recruiting and training more qualified nurses over the years, it may take the edge off our upcoming concern regarding the nursing shortage.

PATRICIA PAIGE