Health care organizations in most of the Western world are struggling with a shortage of nurses. An aging population with greater health care needs, a graying profession, declining nursing school enrollments, and more career choices for women all contribute to the shortage. The extent of the Canadian registered nursing shortage is predicted to reach between 60,000 and 112,000 by 2011. Through this policy analysis, it is shown how a number of factors conspired to create the current nursing shortage in Alberta. Through the analysis of qualitative interviews with key stakeholders, five themes are identified as factors causing this shortage. These themes are national and provincial political contexts during the 1990s, increased need for nurses, lack of timely information, nurses’ political inexperience, and a loss of institutional nursing leadership. Recommendations to address the crisis are also presented.
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