Nursing Shortage Research Paper

Staff Shortages in the Medical Profession

With the increase in demand for health care a critical nursing shortage is expected to rise over the years if necessary action is not in to effect. According to the bureau of labor statistics, the medical professional is expected to grow to 19% by 2022. While this is only a projected growth, many variable factors may affect the overall growth of the industry. Compared to an 11 percent projected growth for all occupations, the workforce is expected to grow if the government and private sector come up with strategies on how to meet the gap. According to the Vanderbilt University Medical Report released on February 2002, many Americans are concerned about the impact the shortage will have on the quality
of medical care they receive. With the continuous population growth in need of healthcare services, a decline in students enrolling in nursing programs and an already existing aging workforce that need to retire, this problem may present a big issue in the near future. In this paper, we analyze the possible strategies the government and private sector can employ to deal with this problem of staffing in the medical profession.
Hospitals across the country are facing a nursing feature which is affecting the delivery of medical care. Long term care facilities are now refusing new patients due to understanding health care facilities are forced to make do with the few with some being force to refuse new patients as is common in the long term care facilities for the old. The shortage in the workforce can be attributed to variable factors that are interrelated. Job dissatisfaction together with the shortages of schools that offer these professions is just but a few of the possible reasons as to why there is a shortage of staff in hospitals. While these reasons may be argued to have a certain impact on the workforce, many medical facilities had to come up with better ways to help them address the shortages in the staffing. In the subsequent paragraphs we look at the some of the strategies that can be used.
Patient safety is a key issue that always comes up in the medical profession.
Patients always want to be assured that there wants will be taken care of when they go to any facility to seek medical attention. While full recovery cannot always be assured, the staff plays a role in assuring and determining patient safety (CARE). The number of staff that is serving the people has an influence on the level of productivity and service. Whether it is nurses, housekeepers, cleaners, therapists or surgeons, productivity is dependent on the amount of workload one is assigned. In my personal experiments watching the nurse’s work in my finding I can say that the nurses work hours are long and over. Why? Nurses will have to give the night shift a full report, patients meds are due, document everything that went on all day during your shift. Nurses will always have overtime and the increased risk of making an error will prolonged if there’s know changes. The duration of the shift can only be limited to a number of hours due to the strenuous nature of the job. This also has an impact on the level of job satisfaction which entails more than just benefits and wages but is a wide concept that involves quality of work, facilities, the amount of overtime work on does, the level of interaction in the
workplace. Most nurses in the medical care complain of low wages and as such the organizations should be encouraged to increase the pay in order to retain employees. It has been a common trend for nurses to shift to other jobs which pay more which is increasingly posing a problem of understaffing (Feldman). Salary gains for nurses have gained momentum in recent years, large part by the nursing shortage and high vacancy rates. Many nurses consider themselves significantly unpaid compared with other professional. But as many nurses pointed out, even a good salary is poor compensation for nurses who struggle daily with unsafe staffing levels, overtime issuers, and other problems associated with the nursing shortage. In the article it says that 83% of RN with a BSN degree between the age of 41-50 or over age of 50 that works full time is paid with an hourly wage rather than an annual salary has over 15 years’ experience work as a staff nurse or as a manager/supervisor/ director has held on current position for 5 years or less. Many facilities offer pay differentials. Some facilities give retention bonuses. While better wages cannot solely have an impact on the level of job satisfaction, it still to some extent plays a significant role in the retention of employees. Cross training is a new trend that has developed across many professions and is gaining familiarity as a way of dealing with shortages in staffing.
It ensures flexibility in that one employee is trained to be able to perform multiple tasks that would have otherwise required other people to perform. Although the staff may take longer to perform the task and not with the same level of specialty as a trained employee, cross training breaks the monotony of work giving employees a sense of how practices work. In the department I’m working as now is trying to get everyone cross train. All nurses are responsible in leaning how a secretary daily assignments, learning how a PCA work also throughout the day. The reason why is because if a secretary calls out of work in there’s no one to replace that secretary is a good thing for the nurses to know how to discharge patients and knows how to assign new admission. That’s when some nurse can be very angry because now they have to do extra overload to accomplish their work throughout the day. It can be very frustrating for a nurse to deal with someone else job. Although this practice can be used as a method to address the shortages in staffing, as a long term strategy it is not advisable as one ends up with employees that know little of everything but not much of anything
(WHO).
The number of staff that operates during a certain shift is a determinant of the level of productivity of the staff. Although this is more of a legislative move, the number of nurses working during a shift should be enough to ensure the level of quality of service is maintained. Although all these factors are inter-related and have to be addressed as a whole, as a long term strategy the investors should initiate training programs to expand the training capacity to meet the demand. Through these activities, hospitals can train their own nurses. Nurses are working long hours that can causes stress, errors, and job lack of satisfaction. Nurses can make more mistakes and medical errors. Nurse shortage will never end around the world. In my personal experience working in the medical field seeing the shortage doesn’t encourage me being a bedside nurse. I can say coming in to work with approximate six nurses to care for 30 patients that are needy patients, critical patients, and also demanding family members that constantly yelling at you. People don’t realize how many patients you have to care for during a shift. That’s when you need extra staff to be able to help you deal with difficult days.

Conclusion
Higher professional staff should place additional changes needed to improve the hospital settling to decrease the job stress and approve staff ability of care. If the medical staff approve the job stress it can provide quality of care, enhance job satisfaction, and can encourage nurses to stay at bedside. In also, nurses are also leaving because they are offer better opportunities and better pay. In the hospitals they have plenty of medical jobs remain unfilled while long care facilities don’t have enough medical staff to give patients satisfaction. With the increasing demand for medical care, long term strategies need to be initiated in order to deal with the shortages of nurses. While the long term shortages may yield results in the near future short term strategies will have to be implemented to deal with the current situation. In the solution healthcare executives including nurse leaders must learn skills for valuing employees. These leaders will need to get together in try to come up with a solution for long term nurses that’s working in the medical field. Nurses needs a better response on why is there a shortage in medical field. In my report I talked about patient’s safety, cross training, etc.