NC NurseCast
NC NurseCast
Sheps Center
NC Nursecast is an interactive, web-based tool that forecasts the future supply and demand for Registered Nurses (RNs) and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) by practice settings in North Carolina. Nursecast also contains the Graduate Diffusion Tool, which maps nurse program graduates’ first place of employment after completing their program.
The Cecil G. Sheps Center’s Program on Health Workforce Research and Policy developed these tools with funding from the North Carolina Board of Nursing and expertise from SMAP Ltd.
About the tool
NC NurseCast allows users to explore trends in the nursing workforce across several metrics:
- Supply: How many nurses are projected in the future?
- Demand: What will be the demand of services?
- Supply – Demand: Will there be a surplus or shortage?
- % Surplus or Demand: What is the relative surplus or shortage?
- Graduate Diffusion: How far do nurses go after graduation?
Key Features
NC NurseCast features several interactive features to support meaningful analysis of trends. Click below to learn more about the visualizations generated through NC NurseCast.
The NC NurseCast tool draws on historical data from the NC Board of Nursing/Health Professions Data System, population data from the NC Office of Budget and Analysis, and expert input from an advisory committee to provide baseline estimates of how many nurses NC will have and how many nurses will be demanded in NC by region and by setting.
The tool draws on historical data from the NC Board of Nursing/Health Professions Data System, population data from the NC Office of Budget and Analysis, and expert input from an advisory committee to provide baseline estimates of how many nurses NC will have and how many nurses will be demanded in NC by region and by setting.
Sheps used licensure data to determine where a nurse completed their first nursing degree for licensure and where they were working two years later. Then Sheps put those origin and destination points on a map for each of North Carolina’s nursing programs. Sheps drew an ellipse around those points to show the spatial distribution of approximately 2⁄3 of the graduates from each program, giving a general idea of the diffusion pattern of a school’s graduates.
Data source
The tool draws on historical data from the NC Board of Nursing/Health Professions Data System, population data from the NC Office of Budget and Analysis, and expert input from an advisory committee to provide baseline estimates of how many nurses NC will have and how many nurses will be demanded in NC by region and by setting. The model also provides alternative scenarios to explore the potential outcome if nurses leave practice earlier than expected, if more students graduate from nursing programs, or if fewer nurses come to NC from out of state.
Other Information
While this powerful tool was published in 2021, it is important to note the data and models reflect circumstances prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Citation: The Program on Health Workforce Research and Policy at the Cecil G Sheps Center. “NC Nursecast: A Supply and Demand Model for Nurses in North Carolina.” November 1, 2021. https://ncnursecast.unc.edu/model/