Last year, the Kentucky Hospital Association reported a need for over 13,000 nurses.

While many organizations and state leaders work to solve this crisis, Kentucky's nursing shortage continues.

So where are we now and what still needs to be done?

We spoke to leaders at the Kentucky Nurses Association to find out this as we start our month long look at how businesses and industries in the state are trying to get and keep people on the job.

It doesn't matter how many.

Beds a hospital has if there are not enough professionals to staff them.

The Kentucky Hospital Association's report in October of 2022 listed that 13,000 nurses were needed in hospitals.

That's just hospitals.

That doesn't look at any of the other places where nurses work.

We're looking at it being closer to 20,000 nurses.

The nursing shortage is nationwide.

It is even worse.

Why?

We don't have enough nurses to care for patients.

The big challenges retaining the nurses we have while building a pipeline of nurses.

Nurses are frustrated.

Nurses are tired.

Nurses are getting older.

Retaining nurses must be a priority.

Some of the things that the American Nurses Association has done, as well as the Kentucky Nurses Association, is to focus on healthy nurse Healthy Nation, which focuses on mental health, exercise, dietary and that type of support.

The CNA has a program called Kentucky Nurses Helping Nurses, and within that are webinars to teach you how to do stress reduction, how to meditate.

Other things that you can do to help raise yourself up from the stress that you're feeling on a day to day basis.

I also have heard from different organizations that they've done things like a lavender rule where a nurse may be experiencing stress at the moment and they just need a break and they'll just they'll call a code lavender.

They go to the lavender room, somebody covers their patients, they do their stressors, They resolve to where they can go back and work and they go back.

That's the lavender.

That's a code lavender, and it works.

The other issue is education.

We don't have the schools of nursing and the faculty in the schools of nursing to actually produce those good nurses that we need.

If we don't have faculty, we cannot admit nursing students.

It's impossible.

Students cannot teach themselves.

We also need ways to start the recruiting for nurses earlier.

People don't really understand what nurses do.

Nursing is not just hospital nursing.

It is a broad spectrum of jobs.

We are scientists.

We're researchers.

We are business people.

There's a million things you can do.

You have to be honest.

It's a hard job.

Anything in nursing is a hard job, but it's a great opportunity for any person to have a career and a career they can build on.

Bill Hayden says that the need for nurses is seen across the board in Kentucky with the state's metropolitan areas and nearly the same amount of need as it is in rural areas.