Why the Nursing Shortage Is Getting Worse, and What Hospitals Can Do About It
The nursing shortage has been a headline for decades. U.S. hospitals have been dealing with it since before World War II, and the shortage has eased and come back again many times in the years since.Yet despite the headlines and the panic, healthcare has kept trundling along, which may be why the warnings are so easy to tune out.
The traditional fix has been to focus on the supply, by educating and training more nurses in hopes the pipeline catches up. But the latest data shows the old fix isn’t working, and the shortage is getting worse.
A Shortage on Multiple Fronts
Four separate pressures are now hitting the workforce at once: experienced nurses are retiring in large numbers, a growing share of licensed nurses aren’t working as nurses at all, and nursing schools are turning away qualified students because they don’t have enough faculty. On top of that, the patient population is getting older and sicker, so demand for nursing care is rising just as the supply of nurses shrinks.
For hospital leaders, this means hiring is getting harder and may not be enough on its own. The focus needs to shift to retention, because holding on to the nurses already on staff matters more than ever. That starts with taking a hard look at why they’re leaving and what would make them want to stay.
Experienced Nurses Are Heading for the Exit
The nursing workforce is older than many people realize. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing’s (NCSBN) most recent National Nursing Workforce Study, the median age of a registered nurse is 50, and 18.3% of RNs are now 65 or older. NCSBN expects many of the last baby boomer nurses to leave the workforce around 2027 as they reach retirement age.
But it’s not just the oldest nurses leaving; nearly 40% of RNs told NCSBN they plan to leave the workforce or retire within the next five years. Already, more than 138,000 nurses have left since 2022.
Older nurses leaving does more than shrink the headcount; it has a ripple effect on the whole unit. When a nurse with 30 years of experience retires, the unit loses their expertise. It’s often the person new grads go to with questions and the one who has run a code a thousand times. That knowledge isn’t easy to replace, and it may be walking out the door at the same time it’s most needed.
More Patients and Fewer Nurses
The same generation leaving the nursing workforce is also becoming a growing share of hospital patients. About 10,000 Americans have turned 65 every day since 2010, and by 2030, every baby boomer will be at least 65.
Older patients understandably need more care. Federal hospital data shows that adults 65 and older are hospitalized at about 2.5 times the rate of adults aged 45 to 64, and more than 6 times the rate of adults aged 18 to 44. They’re also more likely to have several chronic conditions, which means more complex care, more monitoring, and more nursing time per patient. All of this means hospitals are facing heavier patient loads with fewer experienced nurses to handle them.
Licensed Nurses Who Aren’t at the Bedside
The next pressure relates to working conditions. There are about 4.91 million actively licensed RNs in the United States, yet only 3.76 million people are employed as RNs. That means nearly a quarter of licensed nurses aren’t working as RNs. In the last year alone, that number grew by more than 17,000, and it’s still moving in the wrong direction.
Not every one of those nurses left because of burnout. Some moved into other roles, went back to school, or stepped away for family reasons. But the reasons nurses give for leaving tell a clear story. Among nurses who left for reasons other than retirement, 41.5% named stress and burnout as the main cause, followed by heavy workloads, understaffing, and pay.
Recent hiring data points the same way. The 2026 NSI National Health Care Retention & RN Staffing Report found that nearly 23% of newly hired RNs left within their first year, and first-year nurses made up almost a third of all RN departures. Those numbers point to a deeper problem than supply. When new nurses burn out and leave within a year or two, the pipeline starts to look like a leaky pipe. Schools can push more nurses in one end, but hospitals keep losing them out the other.
Schools Can’t Train Enough Nurses to Keep Up
Even if every nursing graduate stayed at the bedside, the pipeline still couldn’t keep pace.
Interest in nursing isn’t the problem. In fact, enrollment in entry-level bachelor’s programs grew 4.9% in 2024. But schools also turned away 80,162 qualified applications that same year, including 65,398 for entry-level BSN programs. The most common reasons were too few faculty members, clinical placement sites, preceptors, and classroom spaces.
The faculty shortage follows the same pattern as the bedside. There’s currently a national faculty vacancy rate of 7.2%, and the share of nursing faculty at or above retirement age was 34.2% in 2024.
Making matters worse, experienced nurses are the people who would become instructors and preceptors. But as they retire or leave the bedside, schools lose the people they’d need to grow. Each of these pressures makes the others worse.
Retention Is the Fastest Lever Hospitals Have
Hospitals are limited in what they can do. They can’t fix retirement demographics, an aging population, or national nursing faculty shortages. What they can control is the day-to-day experience of the nurses they already have.
The hard part is that “we’re short-staffed” and “we’re slammed” are things leaders hear frequently. But without a clear picture of which units are under real, ongoing strain, it’s hard to know where to step in first. By the time it becomes obvious, nurses may already be updating their resumes. Retention comes down to many factors, but making shifts easier for the nurses on the floor is one of the most fundamental.
Spotting Overloaded Units Before They Break
Every unit has hard stretches, like a surge in admissions, a few sick calls, or a run of high-acuity patients. This can push a team to its limit for a temporary period that most teams can absorb. However, problems start when the hard stretch never ends. And with no relief in sight, the cracks can begin to show.
SwipeSense Nursing Insights gives leaders a real-time view of how nursing time is actually being spent across units. It also turns “we’re really busy” into something leaders can see and act on. If hourly rounding starts slipping because nurses can’t get to every room, the data shows it. If one unit is consistently falling behind while others stay on track, leaders can tell the difference between a rough few days and a pattern that needs attention. That proof makes it easier to act early and justify extra staff, adjust assignments, or rethink workflows.
For new graduates (who are among the most likely to leave), catching a struggling unit early can be the difference between staying or leaving.
Giving Time Back to Nurses
Some of the most draining parts of a nurse’s day have little to do with direct patient care, and more to do with the frustrating, mundane errands that eat away at a shift. Searching for equipment is a prime example. Nurses who can’t find an infusion pump, bladder scanner, or wheelchair lose time, lose focus, and lose patience, often several times a shift.
SwipeSense Asset Management uses real-time location tracking to show exactly where equipment is and whether it’s available. Nurses can find what they need in seconds instead of checking one storage room after another. It’s a small change on paper, but it removes a frustration nurses deal with every day, and it gives that time back to patients.
For experienced nurses close to retirement, fewer daily frustrations can make it easier to stay a few more years. For new nurses still finding their footing, it removes one more source of stress during a difficult first year.
One View for Leadership
When nursing time and equipment data live in separate systems, or don’t get tracked at all, leaders are left guessing. They may hear that a unit is falling behind, but can’t easily tell what the cause is, whether it’s staffing, morale, or a lack of supplies.
SwipeSense brings nursing activity and equipment location together on one platform, so leaders don’t have to log in to multiple systems or piece reports together to get the full picture. That single view also makes it easier to show whether a fix is working. If a unit gets an extra nurse, a new equipment storage spot, or a change to rounding assignments, leaders can see what happens to rounding and response times in the weeks that follow, rather than waiting for the next engagement survey or exit interview to find out. It also gives nurse leaders hard numbers to bring to the C-suite when they ask for more staff or resources, which is a much stronger, more tangible case than “my team is exhausted.”
This kind of visibility also changes the conversation between leadership and frontline staff. Nurses are more likely to stay when they can see that leadership understands their workload and is acting on it.
Keeping the Nurses You Have
The nursing shortage is getting worse because of pressures that build on each other. Experienced nurses are retiring, patients are getting older and need more care, many licensed nurses have stepped away from the bedside, and schools don’t have the faculty to train enough replacements. Those problems will take years to solve at the national level.
In the meantime, hospitals have a lot of control over whether their nurses stay. Removing daily friction, giving nurses time back, and catching overloaded units before they reach a breaking point are concrete steps leaders can take now. With real-time visibility into both nursing time and equipment, those decisions can be made with data instead of guesswork.