Is nursing becoming an oversaturated field?

Absolutely not. While it's true that there are some areas around the country where new grad RNs are having trouble finding their first job, this is not true everywhere and it will change. The economy sucks right now and all professions cut back on hiring and tighten things up. It will turn around. With all the changes coming to health care and more people being covered under Obamacare, more people will be seeking out services in health care and the demand for nurses and Nurse Practitioners will rise.

Other reasons why there is an impending nursing shortage which is going to grow in the next several decades has to do with our population. The Baby Boomer population is the largest age group right now. They are just now hitting retirement age. Old people = more sickness and disease and aged care/end of life care. When you have an older population, you also have an older workforce, and that means there are also more older nurses than younger nurses. . . more who retire every year than new grads coming into the profession.

We are also an obese nation. With obesity comes along all kinds of other health conditions like cancer, diabetes, musculoskeletal problems, etc., all putting greater strains on health care.

Nursing schools are impacted and full all the time, but that still doesn't mean they are filling the demand. There are only so many clinical sites for students to train in, only so many nurse educators who are willing to sacrifice getting paid patient-care wages to take a pay cut to go teach nursing.

Read this; there is a lot of good information on why there is a shortage of nurses and why it is going to get worse and not better. http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-shee...

Not only she's right, I'd like to explain what she meant by, "There are only so many clinical sites for students to train in.."

You just can't (even if you have money) open a nursing school - while most classes take place on site, the students have to go to the hospital for hand on training, on real patients. There are simply so many places for them - and this means you just can't flood UCLA Medical Center with 1,000 nursing students in one shift.

She's also right about an experienced nurse who becomes the teacher in nursing school. A grand old title like "Assistant Professor" doesn't pay the bills quite nicely when compared to this person working full time at a hospital.

Lastly, being a teacher at a nursing school is like babysitting. Not only it is very competitive amoung the students (to keep their grades up) and it can get quite catty—such as getting caught up in stupid, childish drama, fighting over boys (and there are few of them in class).

I have witnessed this myself when I was a school nurse at a university that has BSN program. I have since been working for a much larger university so these students are a bit older although I ran into someone who is in MD/PhD program and he is only 23 and a half.

On the other hand, MA (medical assistant) is being flooded with new grads that can't find jobs.