Nursing Shortage -- Independent Living Forum

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 05:59:06 04/08/22 Fri
Author:

Kim456
Subject: Nursing Shortage

The shortage of nurses has been a major crisis in the health care system in the United States of America and in many other countries across the globe. Nursing shortage refers to a situation in which the demand for nursing professionals especially registered nurses (RN) exceeds the supply at local, national or international levels. For example, in the United States of America, the demand for registered nurses is almost three times higher than the supply of nurses. It is also forecasted that nearly one million job openings would be available for registered nurses in major hospitals in the United States between 2014 and 2015.

Shortage of nurses is experienced in both developed countries such as the United States of America, United Kingdom and Australia and in underdeveloped or developing countries such as Nigeria and Brazil. The shortage of nurses in health care institutions can be measured using a variety of ratios such as the ratio of nurses to patients in a health care facility and the ratio of nurses to the population in a given region or using the number of job openings available in health care facilities. A survey conducted by the American Hospital Association in 2009 among nine hundred and fifty hospitals revealed that more than one hundred and twenty six thousand nursing positions were unfilled. The World Health Organization (WHO) also estimates that there is a shortage of nearly six million nurses and physicians in the world. Nursing is the largest health care profession in the United States with nearly three million nurses employed in the field.

Causes of Nursing Shortage

Nursing shortage is caused by a variety of factors. One of the major contributing factors that have led to shortage of nurses in the health care system is a decline in the enrollment of nursing students in colleges and universities. Prospective nursing students have been discouraged by the poor working conditions and low wages paid to nurses. A survey revealed that more than forty nine percent of nurses currently employed within the United States’ health care system are not satisfied with their working conditions and salaries. The survey also revealed that fifty three percent of nurses would not recommend nursing as a profession to their children. This implies fewer people would be enticed to study nursing or to choose nursing as their preferred career in the future. The shortage of nurses does not necessarily mean lack of adequate supply of trained nurses in a given region. Shortage of nurses may also occur due to increased admission rates of students into nursing schools. As a consequence, a number of nurses in the country is expected to decrease considerably in the coming years.

Nursing shortage has also been fuelled by increasing lay-offs of nurses as a result of increase in wages because of high inflation rates and hard economic times. Nursing shortage has also been caused by lack of proper recruitment and placement programs for newly trained nurses and provision of fewer retention incentives for nurses. Sociological studies have indicated nurses often complain of subordination to other medical professionals, over regulation by employers and physicians and difficult working conditions. Nurses also complain of frequent schedule changes, increase in work overloads and lack of appreciation from superiors and colleagues. Such factors have led to massive job dissatisfaction among nurses. Allocation mechanisms and inadequate workforce planning, resource constrained undersupply of new personnel, poor recruitment, reunion policies as well as inefficient use of obtainable nursing resources due to inappropriate skill utilization and mix, inadequate career support and poor incentive structures are other major causes of shortage of nurses in Texas State.

The World Health Organization also affirms that the global shortage of nurses is caused by underinvestment in health worker education, decline in training of nurses, low wages paid to nurses, poor working environments in health care facilities and poor management of human resources within the health care system.

Effects of Nursing Shortage

Increase in nursing turnover remains the major effect of the nursing shortage in most countries. This has led to increase in costs for employing nurses and high costs of managing health care systems. For example, it is estimated that the cost of replacing one nurse in the United States of America ranges between thirty thousand and sixty four thousand U.S. dollars. Some of the major effects of the nursing shortage include an increase in patient workloads for nurses, increased risk of error during the provision of health care services hence compromising the quality of care services provided to patients and risks the safety of patients and increase risk for occupational injury. Nursing shortage has also led to an increase in a negative perception of unsafe working conditions among nurses thus leading to increased shortage and hindering local and national recruitment efforts. Nursing shortage also leads to a strain on resources of the health care system.

I would like to bring to your attention that nursing shortage has become a severe problem in the United States of America and in Texas State in particular. Research studies have indicated that the shortage of nurses is a major problem in the health care system in Texas States. Texas is one of the states in America faced by severe shortage of nurses. It is also a crisis in many other states in the U.S. This has led to unbearable effects on delivery of health care services. The Texas Government should strive at recruiting more nurses in order to increase the number of nurses in the health care industry. This is due to the fact that insufficient hospital staffing is raising the stress levels among nurses, hence negatively impacting their job satisfaction levels and driving many nurses to leave the profession. Low nurse staffing levels are associated with reduced quality of care services, increase in deaths of patients, increased rates of infection and longer hospitals stays. Nursing shortage is associated with higher patient mortality rates. Nursing shortage also leads to increased workload for nurses due to high patient turnover hence leading to higher risks of death and poor care services.

Although recruiting nurses from other states or from foreign countries may be seen as a temporary solution to the nursing shortage, I would argue that this practice would not help solve the situation, but rather perpetuate it. The use of foreign nurses would only prolong the underlying issue of nursing shortages in Texas. Nursing shortage can be solved by improving the working conditions for nurses and making the profession attractive to college students.

Texas State should also ensure that nurses work within their licensed scope of practice, training and certification. The Government of Texas State should find a long term solution to nursing shortage in Texas State. Nursing schools, colleges and universities should expand their enrollment levels in to enable the state meet its demand for nursing care. The state Government should work with nursing schools, policy makers and other stakeholders to bring adequate attention to the nursing shortage crisis in the health care industry. The Government of Texas State in collaboration with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) should enact legislation, identify strategies and form collaborations with stakeholders in the health care industry to address the nursing shortage. The state Government should ensure that there is an increase in the enrollment of students into nursing programs in colleges and universities. Policy makers should develop new strategies such as increased funding to facilitate increase in supply of nurses in Texas State. The Government of Texas should also promote career in nursing and polish the image of nursing profession in order to attract more students into the field. For my part, patient care should be of primary importance in the state. According to Mason, Isaacs, Colby and the Committee on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine (2011), nursing schools have extensive, complicated and expensive processes for those who want to enter the nursing field hence discouraging many people who would like to join the field. Thus, new enrolment policies should be developed and implemented to induce more students to study nursing in colleges and universities.

In my opinion, the shortage of nurses is not as a result of lack of qualified nurses in the state, but rather it is as a result of increase in number of nurses who are not willing to work under the prevailing conditions. Texas Government should adopt appropriate recruitment and retention strategies, pay nurses good salaries that are consistent with the market rates and demand and recruit young and energetic nurses to replace aging nurses who cannot meet the physical demands of their jobs. The Texas Government should abandon traditional strategies for solving the nursing shortage because such strategies have limited success. The changing demographics signal a great need for more nurses to care for our aging population in Texas.

The elimination of the nursing shortage is of paramount importance. In my view, ignoring the nursing shortage in Texas will only aggravate the situation. Further increase in nursing shortage would lead to increase in patient-to-nurse staffing ratios, which further complicates the crisis by creating burnout among nurses and high job dissatisfaction. Nurses should not be forced to work for overtime as a result of shortage of nurses. It also leads to interference with decision-making processes during delivery of care services and increased fatigue and exhaustion among nurses which negatively impacts the physical well-being of nurses.

The nursing shortage poses a great threat to the health care system in Texas State. Therefore, should be addressed appropriately. The nursing shortage is a major threat to the quality of work life for nurses, the quality of patient care as well as the outcomes of patient care. There are more people leaving the nursing field than those entering it although it is the fastest growing medical field. Thus, I hope that the Texas Government would take appropriate actions to curb the ever-increasing shortage of nurses in the state.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Re: Nursing Shortage -- kogociro, 05:28:11 06/28/22 Tue