Nursing industry desperate to find new hires

AP Photo / Tom Gannam

Sheila Jones, a clinical simulation facilitator, demonstrates to nursing students how to draw blood, using a patient simulator, at Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish college in St. Louis. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts about 233,000 additional jobs will open for registered nurses each year through 2016, on top of about 2.5 million existing positions. But only about 200,000 candidates passed the Registered Nurse licensing exam last year, and thousands of nurses leave the profession each year.