Hawaii health officials have been worried for years about an imminent severe shortage of nurses, and the present surplus should not put them at ease.

Once the economy recovers, recent programs aimed at increasing the number of nurses likely will meet their goals, but probably will fall short of the numbers needed as baby boomers age and national health care reform takes hold.

A national shortage of nurses was estimated at 126,000 seven years ago and the shortfall was projected to exceed 800,000 by 2020. The shortage has been blamed in large part on expanded job opportunities for women in other fields and the reluctance of men to enter nursing. The shortage may be exacerbated by the retiring of baby boomers. A survey last year by the Hawaii State Center for Nursing concluded that 43 percent of the state’s 11,000 nurses plan to retire within the next 15 years.

The instability in the nursing profession coincides with the need for more American nursing-school faculty, which already has been on the decline because of retirement and noncompetitive faculty salaries. Hawaii nurses in recent years have earned salaries at least $20,000 a year more than nursing faculty, resulting in skeleton faculty staffs that have caused public nursing schools to turn away qualified student applicants.

The current surplus of trained nurses "is a blip on the radar screen — a phenomenon that caught everyone by surprise when the economy changed," registered nurse Gail Lerch, Hawaii Pacific Health’s executive vice president, told the Star-Advertiser’s Kristen Consillio.

Last December, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics analysts projected that more than 581,500 new registered nurse positions would be created nationally through 2018, a growth of 22 percent, much faster than most other professions. Part of that will come with the implementation of national health care reform, much of which will take effect in 2014.

At Hawaii Pacific Health, which operates more than 40 hospitals and clinics statewide, Lerch said, "We’re overhiring in certain areas in anticipation of movement. We’re trying to do whatever we can to preserve the students in our hospitals." That sounds like a wise policy for Hawaii’s health-care providers.

Meanwhile, too many registered nurses in Hawaii are working as nursing assistants, if at all. They will need to be patient, knowing they will be called on sooner rather than later to keep Hawaii healthy.