Florida Nursing and Healthcare Schools

Nursing and other health care related professions is rated Americas most trusted profession. The value of the profession is well respected and there has never been a better time to become involved in the health care industry. The state of Florida is facing their most challenging nursing shortage ever in history.

Florida is also home of one of the worlds most famous hospitals, the Mayo Clinic. There are only three of these hospitals in the world. The Mayo Clinic is known throughout the world as having the highest reputation in diagnosing and treating the most complicated illnesses as well as having the most up to date technologies and research programs. Health care professionals work closely together to treat and prevent every health care issue affecting the population. This also leads to great opportunities in career advancement as you get to work along side the best health care professionals in the business!

Florida has a tremendous need for qualified nurses. The HPSA Health Care Professional Shortage Areas reports that Florida has 61,000 job openings needing to be filled by Registered Nurses alone. This number is up form 36,000 openings in 2003. The need for these educated professionals keeps growing. This puts Florida as the 3rd highest vacancy rate for nursing positions in the country. Florida=s population of elderly persons is highest in the nation. Over the next 10 years the overall population in Florida is expected to grow 29 percent with those over 65 making up the mass majority.

Out of the Licenced Registered Nurses currently employed in Florida=s communities 45% have only an associates degree and average in age of middle 40's. 20 % of these RN=s only work part time and 21% are not employed. This has left Florida with a great need for Registered Nurses to utilize their skills and contribute to the overall health of our communities. There is a great lack of medical and nursing educators in Florida leaving our schools unable to add new programs for training qualified health care professionals.

Hospitals are having a difficult time in hiring and filling these much needed positions. Although urban areas have a higher job vacancy rate than our rural communities, 95% of all Florida hospitals report severe shortage issues in the following areas...

• Critical Care
• Medical / Surgical
• Emergency Room
• Operating Room
• Cardio Vascular
• Oncology
• Telemetry

Florida started The Promise of Nursing Campaign joining with Johnson and Johnson in 2002. This 30 million dollar campaigns purpose, is to encourage Nursing careers and other professional health care careers, to recruit new nurses, as well as to retain nurses already working in the field. They have joined with other Pro-Nursing organizations, schools, hospitals, and other health care groups and providers to increase the awareness of the importance of having Qualified Health Care Workers in our communities. Recruitment consists of commercial advertisements, job fairs, internet postings and adds in local papers. 70% of the money raised through this Campaign will go to faculty development and the other 30 % goes toward scholarship programs. The government has also issued 15 million dollars to Florida for the repayment program of educational costs, student loan forgiveness for nursing students and other scholarship programs.

Other benefits being offered are sign on bonuses, relocation startup bonuses and financial compensation programs. Although salaries vary depending on location, facility and experience, the average salaries for nurses in Florida are listed below.

• Operating Room - $94,028
• Critical Care - $93,309
• Intensive Care - $96,542
• Head RN - $90,571
• Staff RN - $61,719
• Nursing Home RN - $57,771
• LPN - $40,22

Florida is desperately seeking qualified professional health care workers and this allows for good paying health care jobs. The emphasis is on nursing, but there are plenty of other health care related opportunities in Florida. Take advantage of this ever growing field and put your talents to work where it can really make a difference!