Mississippi was one of many states experiencing a nursing shortage in 2000, and it was getting worse. Hospitals in the state reported an RN vacancy rate that year of 5.6%, which soared to 9.5% the following year, and remained about the same for the next two years.1 But efforts to educate more nurses have started to reverse the trend. In 2006, the RN vacancy rate in Mississippi hospitals was 9.6%; the next year it was 8.7%, and in 2008, the last year for which data are available, it was 6.3%. Many activities contributed to the recent growth in Mississippi's nursing workforce. The Mississippi Office of Nursing Workforce, a group with many collaborative partners (including the Mississippi Nurses Association, Mississippi Hospital Association, Mississippi Board of Nursing, Mississippi State Department of Health, and the Mississippi Council of Deans and Directors of Schools of Nursing), conducted a series of surveys to determine why students failed to complete nursing school.
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