What Is The Issue Of Nursing Shortage

Problem Description Imagine not having a nurse come into look after you, after you have had surgery. No one to check your vitals, give you replacements on your IV, no one to ask you how you are feeling, and no one to come in on time to give you your medications. The nationwide nursing shortages are increasing and creating not only a problem for the health care system but also for patients and their well being. Nurses are an ideal part of the healthcare system providing serious care to clients ranging in all age groups. Nurses assist doctors in daily non surgical procedures and more to help make sure clients are doing their best when they are under care of a healthcare facility and its employees. According to James Buchan (2015), Christine
Duffield (2015), and Amy Jordan (2015) the World Health Organization (WHO) has suggested that there will be a worldwide shortage of 12.9 million healthcare employees by 2035. The problem lies behind the scenes, because in order to provide the best care to patients you need to have enough nurses staffed. According to Buchan, Duffield, and Jordan nursing shortages are more so a lingering problem than a prevailing issue. Nursing educators are also at a low right now. If there are no educators, there will be no nurses in the making. According to Deena Nardi (2013) and Charlene Gyurko (2013) the lack of nursing educators is due to the fact that nurses that go for nursing education don’t pursue it until later on in their lives. And since nursing educator positions are not as competitive as other nursing positions, the salary is not as high as perspective educators would like. Whether we see the problem being not enough educators or not enough potential students, the importance of increasing the numbers of nurses in the United States is crucial. We need to have a proper structure in the health care system and eliminating the nursing shortage will be beneficial for us all in the long run. People are going into various healthcare fields now, such as nursing because of the demand, but are all of those individuals dedicated to helping others and ready to be focused for twelve or more hours per workday or are they in it for the salary?
Implications
The issue of nursing shortages has increased over the years as it lingers on and on.
According to Logan MacLean (2014), Susan Hassmiller (2014), Franklin Shaffer (2014), Kathleen Rohrbaugh (2014), Tiffany Collier (2014), and Julie Fairman (2014) there are three overlapping issues that are causing the lack of nurses in the health care field. The first issue is a decrease in the workforce due to years of poor planning. The second issue is that since the health care system does not have proper salary reimbursements for attending new educational services, perspective nursing students and educators are turned off. The last issue is poor distribution of existing nurses through the nation causing shortages in rural and urban places to increase. Implications of these issues and the overall lack of nurses are felt thorough out the country by not providing clients the care they need. Not enough data is being collected from the patients to provide the best care, medical errors are being made, and not all nurses are able to use the new technology that is being implemented in the system because of the lack of training due to shortages in the
field. Implications for stakeholders such as the patients, comes down to when nurses are making errors in their practice due to not getting enough sleep because of the doubles they have to do, in order for the hospital or clinic to have enough nurses on staff per shift. With most implications the issue begins in the over all health care system leaving hospitals and clinics to depend on themselves to bring in new nurses that are not readily found. With stakeholders such as the providers (i.e. nurses) they have it the hardest when working double shifts to make sure there is no lack of nurses in the unit. Not spending enough time at home and not having an adequate amount of sleep may take a toll on a person, after some time. Nursing programs are also being hit with understaffing of nursing educators because most nursing educators don’t get into the field of education until later one in their careers. The impact of the nursing shortages is strong but in my opinion it may potentially reverse itself if our health care system can adapt features to help this shortage diminish.
Proposed Solutions The nursing shortage has brought up some difficulties with in the health care system, but none that cannot be fixed with some time and effort.
According to Nardi and Gyurko there are varies ways to improve shortages such as having more structured management within the health care system, changing policies within the nursing education spectrum, eliminating the barriers of advanced practices, stabilizing the funding of nursing programs, managing the migration of nurses from other countries into the Unites States, and making nursing faculty salaries competitive. These are all potential solutions that may be able to increase the amount of nurses in the health care field. In my opinion all of these solutions have truth to them, in order to reverse the nursing shortage, the system as a whole has to change to incorporate more than just one change. In order to make nursing educator salaries competitive, the government has to make sure that there is an increase on the pay scale for nursing educators. Because in order to have great nurses in the future that have the correct skill set to practice safe nursing skills you need great nursing educators to teach the
students. Since there are not many students with poor grade point averages being accepted to nursing schools around the nation I believe universities need to take those students anyways. If a students has no criminal priors and their health exams check out then there is not reason for a student to be dismissed as a candidate. GPA does not define a student and their ability to be a great nurses or health care professional in the future. Since we have a nursing shortage in or nation and around the world, in my opinion candidates with good background checks and good health statuses should be able to pursue nursing. And if the student fails to do well in the programs then you can eliminate them from the program. We need to make sure enough people are given a chance in nursing programs because we need more nurses in the health care system! As for the other solutions proposed by the experts I believe each and every one of them is a potential winner if it is applied accurately within the system to create more promising nurses in the field. In conclusion there are many issues that lie within the health care system and the nursing shortage is only one part of it. Many implications towards providers, patients, and hospitals are being found because of the lack of nurses but solutions are being produces, all that there is left to do is implementation of these solutions, to strengthen our system.