Maryland is short 2,603 full-time nurses, and the nursing vacancy rate remains higher than the national rate, according to a report released Wednesday by the Maryland Hospital Association.
In 2007, Maryland hospitals saw a nursing vacancy rate of 10 percent for budgeted but unfilled positions, compared with a national rate of 8 percent.
“These vacancy rates will climb in future years unless we address this problem,” MHA vice president Catherine Crowley said in a statement.
Maryland will have a shortfall of 10,000 nurses in less than a decade, according to a related 2006 report.
Nearly half of the positions surveyed reported higher vacancy rates in 2007, the association found. Physicians assistants, occupational therapists, speech therapists and respiratory therapists were the worst hit, with vacancies of more than 15 percent, according to the report.
[email protected]
