In the News: Rural Nursing Shortages

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

February 02, 2020
A two-part series from The Spokesman Review on nursing shortages in Eastern Washington and the surrounding rural areas.

The Inland Northwest doesn’t have enough nurses. And while there are plenty of people who want to enter the profession, educators say the region doesn’t currently have the capacity to catch up.

‘There’s a bottleneck’: Interest in nursing outpaces opportunity in the Inland Northwest

While there are many rewards to working at a small, critical-access hospital, those hospitals are having trouble attracting nurses. The entire region and, indeed, the nation are facing nursing shortages. But small towns like Davenport feel those staffing holes more acutely than many other areas.

Rural nursing shortages leave critical access hospitals in tough spots