Last week was National Nurses Week, during which we celebrated the nurses who are there for us in the most stressful moments of our lives, but celebration can’t be where the conversation ends and gratitude is not a workforce strategy. We’re not just running short on nurses, we’re running short on the conditions that make nursing sustainable.
Across the country, nurses are delivering a consistent message that the national system is strained. When those at the bedside speak with that level of clarity, our leaders need to respond.
The nursing shortage is often framed as a supply issue, with workforce demand steadily rising as the population ages, while a large number of experienced nurses approach retirement. The challenge is a combination of both how many nurses we educate and whether the profession remains viable enough for nurses to stay.
We’ve built healthcare environments that ask more and more of our nurses each year, while giving them less and less bandwidth to sustain their work.
To better understand how this strain is experienced on a daily basis, Joyce University commissioned a national survey of 1,000 registered nurses. The findings were sobering, with nearly three-quarters reporting emotional exhaustion multiple times a week. At least half said they skip meals or breaks on most shifts because they’re too busy and more than half said they have seriously considered leaving nursing monthly or more in the past six months.
The missed meals and skipped breaks are not abstract occurrences, they happen in patient rooms, during medication passes and in moments when attention matters most.
This is not simply a workforce morale issue, it’s a patient safety issue. In the same survey, roughly half of respondents reported worrying at least once a week that fatigue or overwhelm could contribute to a medication error or other clinical mistake.
If we can’t retain nurses, workforce shortages will continue regardless of how many students enter the pipeline.
Preparation is critical, particularly for students entering environments where decisions are rapid and stakes are high. Graduates must enter practice ready from day one and licensure outcomes provide one meaningful measure of whether that preparation is effective. In 2024, Joyce University’s BSN graduates achieved a 94.31% NCLEX-RN pass rate. This reflects an evidence-based curriculum designed to prepare graduates for first-attempt licensure.
But passing boards is no longer enough, and nursing schools that measure success only by graduation and licensure rates are measuring incomplete outcomes. The real test is whether graduates remain in the profession five years later.
Getting our nurses prepared must also reflect the realities of current and future healthcare practices, as modern medicine is already being reshaped by artificial intelligence in documentation and clinical decision support.
Nursing has always been a profoundly human profession. It is presence in moments of uncertainty, advocacy when patients cannot speak for themselves and noticing subtle changes that algorithms can miss.
Artificial intelligence represents the first major technological inflection point in bedside care since the rise of the electronic health record. If used primarily to increase throughput, it risks adding new pressure to already strained clinicians. If used wisely, it could reduce the documentation burden and restore something nurses urgently need, time at the bedside.
Simulation and AI-integrated education are essential in preparing our nurses to navigate increasingly complex healthcare environments without losing the human judgment, presence and advocacy at the heart of the profession.
Sustainability also has to extend to the current conditions that our nurses practice in and we cannot define resilience as simply doing more with less. We need to promote responsible staffing, protected breaks, workplace safety and meaningful mental health support.
Education alone cannot fix unsustainable work environments and healthcare employers must foster environments where our nurses feel supported and valued. Policymakers need to prioritize the faculty and clinical training capacity that determines how many qualified applicants can enter the profession. At the same time, technology has to reduce cognitive burden rather than increase it.
The future of nursing will not be determined solely by how many students we admit. It will be determined by whether we are courageous enough to redesign the systems they enter so that caring for others does not require sacrificing themselves.