Essay On Nursing Shortage

Nursing Shortage Affecting Both Nurse and Patient
Ansu Sam
York College CUNY

Introduction
One of the main reasons that makes patient safety goals impossible is nurse staff shortage. Nurses shortage is of primary importance, unlike many other health care professionals because of their direct interaction with susceptible patients throughout their stay in the health care settings. They track a patient’s condition continuously and are the first to know about any serious health conditions the patient face while in hospital. “ In a recent study conducted on behalf of the American Hospital Association, respondents reported that the nursing shortage has caused emergency department overcrowding in their hospitals (38%); diversion

Nurses are more likely to make mistakes in executing certain procedures, administering medication and delay certain tasks because of the heavy workload and the time pressure that results from it. This hinders nurse from providing quality care to patients. Joint Commission Safety Goals are more presumably neglected by nurses working in these environments. For example, a nurse who is taking care of 10 complicated patients might forget doctor’s order to change D5 ½ NS to D5W or administer D5W to the wrong patient. This could result in fatal consequences for the patients, and the nurse might end up losing her license or can be suspended. Theresa Brown, a staff RN for five years, said “Mistakes are more likely once people have worked beyond a certain number of hours. That’s just a terrible, bad practice that, again, could be stopped if hospitals just had a large enough [available staff].”( Tuten,

They refer to The National Council of State Boards of Nursing(NCSBN) data about the consistent decreasing number of people taking the NCLEX exam every year since 1994 (Strategies to Reverse the New Nursing Shortage, n.d).
According to ANA “the nursing shortage affords opportunities, but there are consequences, too” (Nursing Shortage, n.d, para 4). ANA points out the negative effects of nursing shortage as medication errors, mistakes, fatigue, injury to nurses, job dissatisfaction and as a result patient quality care suffers.
AHNA states that nursing shortage is a crucial element to the health of our nation. They also mention that increasing recruitment is not an effective way for reducing nursing shortage, but increasing retention of nurses must be given strong priority too and must be resolved too (Mariano, A., F., & Bultena, 2016, para 2).
Strategies to solve Nurse