By: Anna Boyd

Healthcare providers are overworked and placed in life-threatening positions daily. Since the start of this deadly pandemic, they have faced heartbreak and devastation like never before. Many were placed in poor work conditions having to reuse PPE to save their lives, they even lived at the hospitals they worked at the try to reduce the spread.

Nurse specifically were placed in a very poor position. They are burnt out by the crisis of COVID-19 and quitting. Despite this nursing school applications have increased in the past year. Educators are encouraging students to look at the pandemic like a challenge.

Students switched majors after watching loved ones suffer from the coronavirus and seeing the amazing nurses battle to save them. These superheroes in the hospitals are being challenged every day and doing it with a smile in their faces.

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has seen their biggest spike in applicant ever. Many applicants applied before a vaccine was available. These numbers have changed the minds of many administrators of the fear that the pandemic would scare off students.

The University of Michigan reported around 1,800 nursing school applicants for their 150 freshman slots.

Nursing students are taking this opportunity to learn critical-care skills and apply them. The higher numbers could ease the severe nursing shortage that many hospitals are currently facing. This shortage has existed since before the pandemic.

Hospital leaders are watching their staff quit or retire due to the stressful situations these nurses have been placed in throughout the past year. They faced the pressures of caring for dying patients and hostility from the families due to the unknows of this disease.

The issue of nursing shortages is expected to be seen up until 2025. After that hospitals and administrators are hoping to see a balance in students coming in and nurses going out.