Rational and Significance:  Today, the world faces one of the greatest nursing shortages in history.  Buchan and Calman (2005) note that the lack of all health care providers, including nurses, is one of the barriers to achieving the Millennium Development Goals for global health.  Nursing shortages, reported across many continents, are the result of aging nursing workforces and faculty, shrinking recruitment pools, and working conditions (Buchan and Calman).  Many of these factors are comparable to those faced by University of Virginia (UVA) hospital administrators during the post-World War II nursing shortage in America.   Understanding how this hospital’s administrators dealt with staffing an increasingly complex hospital may aid contemporary healthcare administrators in dealing with today’s diminishing global nursing workforce.

 Methodology and Sources: This study used the methods of social history.  The economics of health care and women as a labor force were two philosophical underpinnings used to further define the subject matter.  Primary sources included the University of Virginia Hospital papers, the Virginia Nurses Association papers, and the Virginia State Board of Nursing collection.  Oral interviews with retired UVA nurses employed during the era were also conducted.

 Findings and Conclusions:  The University of Virginia Hospital serves as a microcosm of how a specific institution dealt with its nursing shortage from 1945 to 1965.  Throughout the era, as the hospital grew in size and complexity the number of nurses never kept pace with the demand.  Socio-cultural factors, including women’s employment patterns and their societal roles, influenced nursing and medical administrators as they jointly scurried to devise innovative strategies to recruit and retain nurses.