Silver Tsunami Research Paper
The Silver Tsunami: The Challenges in Developing an Adequately Trained Nursing Force to Meet the Rising Tide of Elderly Baby Boomers
Carel D. Peterson
San Francisco State University
The Silver Tsunami: The Challenges in Developing an Adequately Trained Nursing Force to Meet the Rising Tide of Elderly Baby Boomers
In what is described as a silver tsunami, the baby boomers (boomers) are turning sixty-five years old at an alarming rate (Heise, et al., 2012). Beginning in 2010 when the first wave hit, the estimated seventy-eight million baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1965, are turning age sixty-five at a rate of approximately 10,000 per day (Heise, et al., 2012). Compounding the wave of boomers reaching age sixty-five, is an …show more content…
337). Some of the reasons cited in her paper for the decline in care include: increased patient load, decreased time for direct patient care, increased pressure to accomplish more with less time, and mandatory overtime. For these reasons, nurses reported feeling overburdened, overworked and overstressed and dissatisfied with their jobs. In addition to the general dissatisfaction with the profession, negative stereotypes of nurses such as the “physician’s handmaiden” continue to dominate the public perception of the nursing profession, harming the efforts to recruit new talent into the profession (Goodin, 2003). In order to recruit new nurses, Goodin recommends programs that will expose young people to positive and authentic images of nursing. She uses the coalition of thirty-two nursing and health care organizations who are working together on the campaign, ‘Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow,’ and Johnson & Johnson’s ‘Campaign for Nursing’s Future’ as good examples of programs that provide this positive “real-life goodness of nursing” messages necessary to accomplish the task. Goodin posits that increasing the value in the eyes of consumers will lead to nursing as a more respected profession in society as a whole and an increase in new nurses entering the workforce as a
Carel D. Peterson
San Francisco State University
The Silver Tsunami: The Challenges in Developing an Adequately Trained Nursing Force to Meet the Rising Tide of Elderly Baby Boomers
In what is described as a silver tsunami, the baby boomers (boomers) are turning sixty-five years old at an alarming rate (Heise, et al., 2012). Beginning in 2010 when the first wave hit, the estimated seventy-eight million baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1965, are turning age sixty-five at a rate of approximately 10,000 per day (Heise, et al., 2012). Compounding the wave of boomers reaching age sixty-five, is an …show more content…
337). Some of the reasons cited in her paper for the decline in care include: increased patient load, decreased time for direct patient care, increased pressure to accomplish more with less time, and mandatory overtime. For these reasons, nurses reported feeling overburdened, overworked and overstressed and dissatisfied with their jobs. In addition to the general dissatisfaction with the profession, negative stereotypes of nurses such as the “physician’s handmaiden” continue to dominate the public perception of the nursing profession, harming the efforts to recruit new talent into the profession (Goodin, 2003). In order to recruit new nurses, Goodin recommends programs that will expose young people to positive and authentic images of nursing. She uses the coalition of thirty-two nursing and health care organizations who are working together on the campaign, ‘Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow,’ and Johnson & Johnson’s ‘Campaign for Nursing’s Future’ as good examples of programs that provide this positive “real-life goodness of nursing” messages necessary to accomplish the task. Goodin posits that increasing the value in the eyes of consumers will lead to nursing as a more respected profession in society as a whole and an increase in new nurses entering the workforce as a