Crisis in the classroom

For once, the experts agree: there's trouble in the classroom. As Globe and Mail writer Jeffrey Simpson noted in a February 1999 column, experts have projected Canada will need at least 10,000 nursing graduates per year by 2011, compared to around 5,000 now coming out of RN diploma and basic baccalaureate programs each year. "Unless nursing schools beef up enrolments and nursing graduates can find employment, the mean age for nurses will keep on rising," he wrote. "...Finding, training and financing those thousands of additional nurses will be among the health-care system's most urgent demands in the years ahead."