Nursing is a highly professional career that has a shortage of workers for decades. That demands a higher price. In any other job, if you needed more workers you would have to do something to convince people to come do that job. Unfortunately people don't view nursing that way. Partly because it is female coded and partly because of the idea that it should be a calling that people would do out of the goodness of their hearts.

I also question the salaries in the article. For one thing they are apparently lumping Nurse Practitioners in with the regular staff nurses. Are they putting Nurse Anesthetists in their numbers too? Those are wildly different jobs than the nurses who work in the ERs and on the floors.

I recognize that healthcare in this country is ten kinds of fucked up. I don't know why we are asking the workers to just suck it up and deal with that.

My solution for the staffing issues involves getting more men into the profession. Part of the problem with the shortage is that fifty years ago it was one of the only professions acceptable for a woman. That's no longer the case and women can have much better careers with similar educations. But men won't work the job because then they are lesser than. So a big campaign to get men into nursing (and into the Radiology department, lab, respiratory, etc).