Carol Kleiman / Syndicated columnist
Amid shortage, nurses seek better jobs

Nurses used to describe the stress they experience as "burnout." Now they call it "a need for work/life balance." And today, health-care institutions that want to ease the shortage of nurses are listening.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, hospitals nationwide could use 110,000 more nurses right now, and the U.S. Department of Labor warns that an additional 450,000 registered nurses will be needed by 2008.

What's noteworthy is that nurses themselves are leading the way toward solving the critical shortage. They're focusing on their need for work/life balance, which many believe is the reason young people aren't entering the profession — which is predominantly female — and older workers are leaving it.

"Work/life balance has always been a problem, but now, with the shortage, it's even harder to schedule any personal time," said Joan Compton of Elgin, Ill., a registered nurse since 1976.

"Many nurses, like me, never have a Christmas off and have to miss our kids' school programs. Many don't know in advance when they'll have to work and can't be part of the regular life of their families. Nurses care deeply about their patients, but they also care about their child with a cold."

Compton says mandatory overtime, being on call and not having set days off are hard on a family. "Nurses need more control over their hours, on-site child care and flexible hours," she said.

And she believes nurses ultimately will get the kind of flexibility they need.

"With a work force so predominantly female, someone has to do something," Compton said.

Nurses aren't sitting back quietly. Instead, they are a powerful force nationwide for bettering their conditions — particularly through unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees based in Washington, which represents more than 60,000 public- and private-sector nurses nationwide.

"In recent years, nurses have become increasingly aware that a lack of work/life balance is the reason we have such a shortage," said Sonia Moseley, executive vice president of the United Nurses Association of California, an AFSCME affiliate representing 11,000 nurses in Southern California. "They're more enlightened now and are saying, 'I have some rights here.' "

Her union is involved in a lawsuit to ensure that nurses get lunch breaks and 15-minute rest periods or compensation for missing them, according to Moseley, who attended a recent summit conference for union nurses held in Chicago to discuss work/life issues and to strategize.

Nurses nationwide know more improvements are needed. Cheryl Johnson, a full-time registered nurse and president of the United American Nurses, AFL-CIO, based in Washington, puts it this way:

"It's not enough just to get more people into nursing — we've got to change nursing so they'll stay."

E-mail questions to Carol Kleiman at ckleiman@tribune.com. Copyright 2003, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.