The shortage of nurses and nurse aides is rapidly reaching the crisis point and is threatening the quality of patient care, witnesses told a Senate Committee on May 17.

"The public's demand for the highest quality patient care at the lowest possible cost has come face to face with the tightest labor market in the past 30 years," Sister Mary Roch Rocklage, testifying on behalf of the American Hospital Association, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

"For example, government predictions state that the nation will need 1.7 million nurses by 2020. But just more than 600,000 will be available, making up 35% of the nurses that will be needed to care for the people of this nation," she said.

Bill Scanlon of the Government Accounting Office told the committee that several factors have combined to create the current shortage.

They include

• the aging of the current nursing workforce

• fewer nurses and aides in the training "pipeline."

This is due to the availability of better-paying, less stressful occupations, as well as job dissatisfaction that is not only prompting nurses to leave the profession, he said, but "also discouraging others from joining."

Although lawmakers have introduced several bills aimed at beefing up recruitment and training of nurses and nurse aides, witnesses said that working conditions must be addressed at the same time.

"There will be no solving today's nurse shortage without improving the overall working conditions of nurses," Gerald Shea of the AFL-CIO, told the committee.

Michael Elsas, CEO of Cooperative Homecare Associates of the Bronx, New York, told the committee that the problem is even worse for the home-care aides he employs.

"Direct-care jobs have always been of such poor quality that many paraprofessional workers have long endured poverty-level wages, part-time hours, and no benefits -- relegated to the bottom rung of respect within the healthcare workforce hierarchy," Elsas testified.

"Now, however, the shortages and high turnover are forcing a downward cycle of deteriorating job quality. Those who do show up are forced to work 'short' or able to offer only 'drive-by home care' as they rush from one home across town to another," Elsas said. The nation must start treating its paraprofessional healthcare workforce "as the scarce resource that it is," he added.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This could be one fatal flaw in the traditional medical paradigm. The intensive efforts of traditional medicine requires loads of high tech and ancillary care. More and more nurses are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with this approach and it appears that physicians and hospitals will find it increasingly difficult to hire nurses to carry out their "orders." Especially since many of these "orders" are directly connected to the patients actually dying. This could be one of the factors that contributes to the beginning of the end of the traditional paradigm. I am absolutely convinced that we CAN change it. How? By spreading the truth about health. By giving people REAL alternatives that will restore their health instead of "band-aid" solutions that do not heal them but increase the coffers of the drug companies. So, let as many of your friends and relatives know about the newsletter and have them sign up so they can be part of the transformation. Related Articles: Nursing Mistakes Causing Many Unnecessary Deaths British Journal Finds "One in Ten Harmed in Hospital" Blunders by doctors kill 40,000 a year in Britain If You Are Younger Than 45 -- Your Number One Risk Of Dying Is Being Treated By A Doctor!