Article critique - Lab Report Example

This practical value of this model makes this study stand out among the existing publications in the field. The recent projections forecast increasing deficit in the future demand for registered nurses. Thus, according to the HRSA estimate published in 2002, the demand for registered nurses (RN) will reach 2.8 million nurses by 2020 (HRSA 2002). The primary purpose of their study is to correct the existing RN shortage projections by taking into account the recently increasing tendency of late entry into nursing profession.

The authors believe that the declining interest in the nursing profession the HRSA and other projections rely upon might have been only a temporary phenomenon related to the choice of first career; on the other hand, the number of people entering nursing at later ages (late twenties – thirties) commonly has not been taken into account despite the rapidly increasing weight of this cohort. Auerbach and colleagues aim to correct this essential drawback by proposing a specific model that considers the tendency of late nursing entry.

The research purpose formulated by the authors did not imply any too specific requirements to be addressed: large massive of reliable representative data was, in fact, the only serious requirement. The fact that Auerbach and colleagues employed a simple statistical model, commonly used by demographers and economists, to reveal changes the number and age of RNs over time confirms the assumption that the study did not represent much of a challenge in terms of methodology. Therefore, reliability and representativeness of input data could be considered the most important problem.

The authors used data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1973 to 2005 which provided comprehensive nationally representative information on demographics, earnings, hours worked, industry sector, and employment of more than 3,000 RNs employed in nursing