Nightingale College (Salt Lake City, UT) hosted a TEDxNightingale event that rallied national leaders to demand radical redesign of nursing education and workforce systems, as America faces a projected 350,000-nurse shortage within the decade.
Salt Lake City, Utah — April 9, 2026
The U.S. is on track to face a shortage of 350,000 nurses within the decade. In 2024 alone, nursing schools turned away 80,000 qualified applicants — not for lack of interest, but because the system was never built to scale.
Salt Lake City-based Nightingale College convened national leaders from healthcare, education, technology and workforce development at its inaugural TEDxNightingale College event to name the real problem: the systems themselves. The event's rallying premise — "Radical System Transformation" — argues that incremental fixes are over. The structures shaping healthcare education, employment and support must be rebuilt from the ground up.
Speakers didn't mince words. Columbia University nurse scientist Dr. Max Topaz noted that medical discoveries take an average of 17 years to reach clinical practice — and challenged the room to ask whether AI can responsibly compress that to seconds.
Jason Altmire, CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities and former U.S. congressman, put it plainly: "This shortage is not a failure of people. It is a failure of systems."
Katie Boston-Leary of the American Nurses Association warned that traditional leadership models are obsolete: "We are moving from the Great Resignation to the Great Detachment."
Nightingale College President Jeffrey Olsen framed the challenge for innovators: "Results are by design. Before we start changing systems, we must be clear about the problem we're trying to solve."
Throughout the fifteen talks, thought leaders repeatedly stressed:
The full talk series is available online.
It's worth noting that Nightingale Education Group — Nightingale College's parent organization — was also just named a 2026 USA Today Top Workplaces award winner, recognized by confidential employee survey for its people-first culture. The timing feels intentional: you can't transform a broken system without the kind of workforce that believes in the mission. Apparently, Nightingale's employees do.