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the setting of the nursing shortage
issues with nursing shortage
upcoming nursing shortage
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Recommended: the setting of the nursing shortage
For many years, the nursing shortage has been a relevant topic in today’s society. The nursing shortage is defined as a lack of trained nurses to provide care for ill individuals. Nursing schools inability to grow programs quickly enough to meet demands (Nursing Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2014). The shortage is not only an issue in the United States but all over the world. This problem affects a wide range of people from current registered nurses, patients, and other members of the healthcare team. According to the Nursing Association of Colleges of Nursing (Rosseter, 2014), the nursing shortage is due to the expansion of healthcare and nurses who are baby boomers beginning to retire. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment reports, …show more content…
2). The purpose of this paper is to discover the issues of the nursing shortage affecting society, the solutions to overcome the shortage, and how the shortage affects quality of care. Issues of the Nursing Shortage that affect today’s Society The media frequently portrays nurses’ inability to provide adequate patient care. People do not feel it is safe to be admitted hospitals. Unfortunately, the public is unaware of the responsibilities, medical knowledge, and skills required for proper care. The media presents a false view of nursing responsibilities, roles, and professional issues (Nevidjon & Erickson, 2000) Several other causes have been attributed to the nursing shortage. An increase in the number of nurses is needed. Sadly, there is little increase in compensation for nurses. In addition to no growth in pay, the level of stress, responsibility, and demand nurses is increasing. Unfortunately, patients are the ones who suffer. When a hospital does not have the proper nursing staff to care for patients, it results in poor patient safety and patient outcomes (Buerhaus, Donelan, Ulrich, Norman, DesRoches, & Dittus, 2007). Nursing salaries compared to other professions has remained stagnant. For example, a registered
... & Abrahamson, K. (2009). A critical examination of the U.S. nursing shortage: contributing factors, public policy implications. Nursing Forum, 44(4), 235-244. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6198.2009.00149.x
Research has also shown that when you have a shortage of registered nurses at the baccalaureate and higher degree it is endangering the safety of the patient. Comparatively in a study done at the University of Pennsylvania they found that patients experienced a significantly lower death and failure to re...
The nursing shortage most likely does not mean a great deal to people until they are in the care of a nurse. The United States is in a severe nursing shortage with no relief in sight due to many factors compounding the problem and resulting in compromised patient care and nurse burnout. Nursing shortages have been experienced in the past by the United States and have been overcome with team effort. However, the current shortage is proving to be the most complex and great strides are being made to defeat the crisis before it becomes too difficult to change. Researchers anticipate that by 2010, the United States will need almost one million more registered nurses than will be available (Cherry & Jacob, 2005, p. 30).
With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, more Americans than ever now have access to healthcare services. This may seem like a good thing since nurses play such a vital role in the administration of preventative and routine care (two of fastest growing areas of healthcare). But in reality, the United States has a massive nursing shortage and the problem is likely to only get worse. Due to the influx of patients into the healthcare system and the aging and retirement of baby boomers, nursing positions aren't being filled fast enough to keep up with demand. In fact, 2-3 million baby boomers will age into Medicare every year for the next 30 years. For this reason, the need to fill nursing positions will outpace nearly all other fields.
In the most practical terms, the United States is still facing a major shortage of nurses. Simultaneously, the U...
The nursing shortage is a major issue that has been facing our nation for quite some time. Two articles that I discovered while researching this topic are The Nursing Shortage: A Crisis in Health Care by Georges C. Benjamin and Influences on our Perspective Nursing Shortage by Sarah Elley. Although they both provide me with great insights about the topic, I will be using Benjamin’s article more because he is a more qualified writer, it is also focused on the United States nursing shortage specifically, and it provides better references focused around my topic of research.
There are various issues that arise with having a shortage among nurses in the hospital setting. Scientists have found that nursing shortages can lead to both complications during a patient’s hospital stay and in some cases patient mortality. This is due to the fact that nurses are unable to focus on proper care for each individual patient’s needs.
According to the American Nurse Association, nursing has the second greatest job growth in all US professions. However, the number of nursing shortage is only increasing as the years go by. During the hard times that many Americans have been facing in this economy, there have been lots of nurses whom have been let go from their work field, have re-entered their field just so they can provide for their families, or even nursing students whom have felt discouraged from entering their field professionally because of the nursing shortage situations. To specify in a field, the reason for nursing shortage in the OR can be because of lack of peroperative education or experience, nurses wanting to work in other areas, or the trouble of drawing nurses into this field.
RNs are on the top of the list of jobs open in health care, and are also in the top ten to have open jobs (Damp). In the US there are approximately 3.1 million RNs; they make up about seventy percent of a hospital staff. Nurses aren’t only women now; statistics have shown that the amount of men in the nursing field is growing (Cardillo). Nursing is expected to be in a higher demand in cities, and small areas. It is expected for it to grow twenty-six percent in the next few years ("Degree Programs for Registered Nurses”). Facilities are never over staffed; nursing jobs will always be
The prolonged shortage of skilled nursing personnel has been a serious concern to the healthcare industry, and this shortage has impacted the quality of care delivery. In addition, nursing turnover has also exacerbated the problem of nursing shortage. Nursing shortage has been blamed on many nurses retiring and less younger nurses joining the occupation. There is also an increase in life expectancy (baby boomers) leading an increase in both physical and mental ailment with subsequent demand in nursing care. Nurses are also leaving nursing profession because of inadequate staffing, tense work environment, negative press about the profession, and inflexible work schedules. Even though nursing is a promising career and offers job security, the
These articles have many similarities when discussing the issue of staffing shortages. For patients, their loved ones and the general population, they don’t understand the ramifications and strain that staffing shortages have on nurses. People expect and deserve complete, competent and safe care when they are patients. These articles bring to light all the struggles that nurses have to deal with. Nurses are fearful that they will make mistakes, will harm patients, and will harm themselves. (Bae, 2012; Erlen, 2001; Martin, 2015) Overtime can be overwhelming and exhausting, which can lead to errors being made. (Bae, 2012; Erlen, 2001) These articles perceive that it may be beneficial for nurses, patients, and healthcare facilities to decrease the nurse-to-patient ratio, however, this option is not always
Factors such as, heavy workloads, stress, job dissatisfaction, frequent medical errors, and intention of leaving the job are all common for nurses to experience, especially during the nursing shortage crisis. Not only do the nurses suffer during a shortage, but the patients ' health outcomes suffer even more. For instance, there are higher rates of infectious diseases and adverse patient outcomes, such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), upper gastrointestinal bleeding, shock, pneumonia, prolonged hospital stays, failure to rescue, and mortality. As a result, this leads to higher re-admission rates for patients. Furthermore, high patient-to-nurse ratios cause heavy workloads due to an inadequate supply of nurses, an increased demand for nurses, a reduction in staffing and an increase in overtime, and a shortened length of stay for patients. Without the heavy workloads that nurses have to endure on a daily basis, there would more time for nurses to communicate more effectively with physicians, insurance companies, and patients and their families. Those heavy workloads are the result of hospitals reducing the nursing staff and implementing mandatory overtime policies just to meet unexpectedly high demands. Unfortunately, the nursing shortage has affected nurses ' mental and physical health. For example, the most common health concerns for nurses include cardiovascular health, occupational injuries and illnesses, and emotional and physical exhaustion. Therefore, safe-staffing ratios/levels have to become the main
Due to this health care shortage, many nurses are putting patients’ lives at risk every day because
“What is a nurse?”. Denotatively, a nurse is “a person trained to care for the sick or infirm, especially in a hospital”; But nurses are far than just a trained individual, nurses are far more important which is why they are in such high demand. Nurses have always been in high demand. For hundreds of years now nursing has played a very important role in health care and the lives of numerous individuals. “The United States alone plans to add more than 382,000 nursing jobs in the next 10 years”. Four factors explaining why nursing jobs are currently in such high demand are: The academic selection process is very rigorous, the growing number of retiring nurses, nurses not having what it takes to keep up, also to prevent the doctors from getting
The effects of having a deficient nursing staff are explored in this paper. By reducing the number of nurses in a healthcare facility the quality of care is no longer at its peak. If healthcare facilities were to hire an adequate number of nurses the quality of care would return to its peak. However, as the number of nurses continues to deteriorate current health care team nurses are forced to work with a soaring nurse-to-patient ratio. As the quality of care diminishes hospital stay is extended, which increases the cost of care for the hospital and patient. The severity of the issues that an inadequate nursing staff have are substantial and need to be resolved. This paper examines the abounding effects associated with inadequate