Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

Running head: HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE SHORTAGE 1

HEALTHCARE WORKFORCE SHORTAGE 9

Healthcare Workforce Shortage

Name: Catherine Nwosu

Walden University

NURS 6053

Date: 12/21/2020

Instructor: Dr. E. Townsley

Healthcare Workforce Shortage

The United States, among other countries, is facing an impending shortage of healthcare workers. The shortage of healthcare workforce is an issue that has been present for a long time in the healthcare industry. Although leaders and other critical stakeholders in the healthcare industry are aware of the impending shortage of healthcare professionals, a long-lasting solution has not yet been realized. It is estimated that more than 250,000 healthcare workers were required by 2020 to meet the rising demand for healthcare services in the United States alone. The United States is facing a vacancy rate of up to 20% in the healthcare industry (World Health Organization, 2017). Epidemiologists, health nurses, and environmental health professionals are, particularly in high demand. It has been estimated by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) that by 2030, the number of physicians in the healthcare sector would be less by about 105,000, with a scarcity of between 7,300 and 43,000 primary care physicians, and a shortage of about 33,500 to 61,000 for non-primary care specialists (Snavely, 2016). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of shortage of healthcare workers in the United States.

Healthcare Issue

The New York-Presbyterian is one of the best healthcare facilities in united states of America is one of the biggest and busiest hospitals in the country (NYP, 2018). It was founded in 1771 as the New York hospital and in 1998 was renamed to New York-Presbyterian. As of 2020 the facility had around 20,000 employees and 2,678 beds. Being one of the largest and busiest hospitals in the country and the world it is flooded with patients from different regions seeking healthcare services which make the available workforce insufficient to meet the demand. The issue of healthcare workforce shortage in the organization has led to an increase of human and medical errors which are caused by the exhausted, anxious and stressed practitioners who are over worked. The result of this issue in the healthcare organization is that it causes poor services rendered to the patients in the facility which causes poor health outcomes which have adverse effects on their overall well-being. The shortage of healthcare practitioners in the facility has also affected the well-being of the healthcare workers and reduced their job satisfaction due to fatigue, burnout and job-related stress leading to high turnover rates. Due to the adverse effects of workforce shortage in the organization and the errors that come with it has affected the trust of the community towards the facility which has reduced their clients affecting their profits (Dzierba et al., 2020). The organization does not maintain any quantitative data on the impacts of having workforce shortage as a way of averting problems with the law and stakeholders.

Literature Review

The World Health Organization (2017) stated that the Sustainable Development Goals of 4.45 doctors’ midwives. And nurses per 1000 population were acknowledged as the minimum concentration signifying the need for healthcare workers. As per the World Health Organization, in the year 2013, there were 43 million healthcare workers globally (World Health Organization, 2017). With a significant growth rate of healthcare workers of 55% per annum, it is estimated that by the year 2030, there would be a total of 67.3 million health workers. According to the statistics presented by the World Health Organization, in the year 2013, there was a shortage of 17.4 million healthcare workers, 2.6 million being doctors, 9 million being nurses and midwives, and the remaining number representing all the remaining healthcare workers (World Health Organization, 2017). South East Asia and Africa were the two regions that were largely affected by the scarcity of healthcare workers. It is projected that by 2030, the global shortage of healthcare workers would stand at 14.5 million, which is a decline in the shortage by only 17 percent. Interns are mostly encouraged to work with hospitals by offering them monthly stipends and opportunities for career growth (Marć et al., 2019).

The world would need approximately 80 million healthcare workers by 2030, a number that is double the number of healthcare professionals in 2013 (Schwartz, 2020). Without the implementation of strategies and policies to address the issue of the lack of healthcare workers, it is estimated that by 2030, there would be a total of 65 million healthcare professionals, which means that there would be a lack of 15 million healthcare workers globally. In the United States, 1 million healthcare workers are above the age of 50, which means that a third of the country's healthcare population is expected to retire in the next decade and a half (Schwartz, 2020). In the year 2012, the United States' higher institutions of learning had to turn away over 79 000 qualified candidates to the medical colleges due to lack of learning and training resources, thereby contributing to the shortage of healthcare workers in the country.Haddad, Annamaraju, and Toney-Butler (2020), identified that harnessing technology is also another solution to the scarcity of healthcare workers in the United States. The use of e-health, e-learning, AI, VR simulation, and the internet of things to train, educate and empower healthcare workers would go a long way in helping to ease the issue of the shortage of healthcare workers (Haddad et al., 2020).

Strategies

A report by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, formulated a list of endorsed steps to address the issue of healthcare workforce shortage in the United States. The recommendations included snowballing technical and political leadership to sustain human resource development in the healthcare sector and the implementation of sustainable funding models (Marć et al., 2019). The various stakeholders in the healthcare sector decided on strengthening governance frameworks. Strong governance frameworks are needed to guide medical education, health employment, migration of healthcare workers, international exchange of medical workers, and encouragement of innovative partnership models. Implementing telemedicine services would eliminate the need for patients visiting healthcare facilities seeking patient care services. The emerging technologies also generate the demand for new skills, thereby increasing the potential to employ more in the digital delivery of healthcare services (Haddad, Annamaraju, &Toney-Butler, 2020).

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

The first competing need that impacts the shortage of healthcare practitioners in America, which results in a national healthcare stressor, could be the population growth and high demand for healthcare services (World Health Organization, 2016). Recommendation for incentives such as extra pay related to overtime and extra worked, or extra time off to rest and recuperate. Also allowing interns to work in the facility to give the practitioners an extra hand minimizing their workload. These recommendations would be given to the Director of Nurses and Administration (Anderson, 2019).

The second competing need is to cut the cost of resources by monitoring supplies and wastage. Ways to attain this would be to monitor the number of supplies used at least daily and any issues would be addressed immediately (Drennan & Ross, 2019).

Policy Critique

Curbing Workforce Shortage is the name of the policy formulated by the healthcare organization to ensure that it solves the problem of having a shortage of healthcare workers which numbered third among the policies in the strategic plan. The components of the policy include putting aside funds to hire more practitioners, allowing interns to help in the facility and using technology in catering for the patients and monitoring the available resources. The strengths in promoting ethics of the policy includes employees' benefits are that they enjoy a manageable workload that reduces burnout due to the extra hands that the additional hires offer the team (Enoch, 2017). The organization also benefits as with adequate human resources; they can create manageable shifts for their practitioners, enhance job satisfaction, and reduce errors caused by fatigued workers who work long hours' shifts without breaks or off days. The challenges in promoting ethics of the policy includes is that the organization allows unlicensed practitioners to serve patients performing the same duties as the qualified health practitioner may affect the patients' health outcomes due to their lack of experience. Also, if the organization does not make as much money as expected annually, it affects how it hires the extra workforce to supplement its workforce (Marć et al., 2019). Comment by Elaine Wheeler Townsley: NEED CITATION FOR POLICY

The first competing need is the shortage of nurses, the recommendation to address this is to ensure that the government and the healthcare sector properly equips and build more medical institutions of higher learning to ensure that they accommodate and properly train the high number of candidates who want to pursue career in medical field. With this strategy in place the number of qualified and well-trained healthcare practitioners will increase hence dealing with the shortage of healthcare workers effectively (Marć et al., 2019).

Lack of supplies when needed to care for patients is another competing issue that is adversely affecting the healthcare sector. The recommendation to address this and to balance the needs of workers is to adopt the use of technology and harness its benefits to ensure that healthcare facilities and practitioners effectively manage the available resources. It is important to also educate and train the healthcare practitioners on how to effectively use the technologies to minimize ethical shortcomings and maximize its benefits of balancing the available resources (Haddad, Annamaraju, &Toney-Butler, 2020). The shortcoming of telemedicine services is that if not effectively secured it can be hacked hence violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) guidelines. It is recommended that all the stakeholders involved or uses telemedicine services should be trained on how to effectively use the services to make it effective and secure preventing the ethical shortcomings such as leaking personal medical information (Haddad et al., 2020).

Lit review with two articles/research papers summarized. Then two more citations with recommendations to address the issue.

Conclusion

The shortage of healthcare workers is one of the main challenges facing the United States healthcare system. The main reasons behind the shortage of healthcare workers is the increasing number of the aging and retiring workforce population and the lack of adequate resources to train a huge number of qualified individuals in medical courses (Drennan & Ross, 2019). The best strategies that can be implemented to deal with the issue is to have strong frameworks in place and to harness the benefits of emerging technologies and abiding to the Proper legal standards for sufficient staffing in the healthcare sector and facilities in America (WHO, 2016). It is upon the leadership of the healthcare sector and the facilities to make proper staffing levels a priority and not making profits. The healthcare sector cannot manage to effectively deal with the issue of workforce shortage on its own but with partnerships, it is possible to solve this issue (Aithal & Aithal, 2017). Quality healthcare services are a right of every citizen and the government should get involved in the healthcare sector to regulate it and ensure that its citizens receive the best quality services. The shortage of health care practitioners will continue to get worse if not dealt with as early as possible (World Health Organization, 2017).

References

Aithal, A., &Aithal, P. S. (2017). Task-Shifting–An Alternative Survival Strategy for Healthcare Organizations. International Journal of Scientific Research and Modern Education (IJSRME), 2(2), 34-48.

Anderson, B. A. (2019). Facing the nursing workforce shortage: policies and initiatives to promote a resilient healthcare system. Caring for the Vulnerable, 363.

Drennan, V. M., & Ross, F. (2019). Global nurse shortages—the facts, the impact, and action for change. British medical bulletin, 130(1), 25-37.

Dzierba, A. L., Pedone, T., Patel, M. K., Ciolek, A., Mehta, M., Berger, K., ... & Witenko, C. J. (2020). Rethinking the Drug Distribution and Medication Management Model: How a New York City Hospital Pharmacy Department Responded to COVID‐19. Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, 3(8), 1471-1479.

Enoch, J. (2017). Healthcare leaders recognize 11 providers for developing frontline workers. National Fund for Workforce Solutions. Retrieved 8 March 2020 from https://nationalfund.org/news_post/healthcare-leaders-recognize-11-providers-for-developing-frontline-workers/

Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2020). Nursing shortage. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.

Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., &Januszewicz, P. (2019). A nursing shortage–a prospect of global and local policies. International nursing review, 66(1), 9-16.

NewYork-Presbyterian. (2018). About Us. Retrieved January 17, 2021, from https://web.archive.org/web/20140813090608/http://careers.nyp.org/about-us/

OECD Development Center. (2019). Health and philanthropy, harnessing novel approaches for improved access to quality healthcare. OECD Development Centre, Paris. Retrieved 8 March 2020 from http://www.oecd.org/development/networks/2019_Health_policy_note.pdf

Schwartz, E. (2020). The Global Health Care Workers Shortage: 7 Numbers to Note. https://www.projecthope.org/the-global-health-worker-shortage-7-numbers-to-note/02/2020/

Shin, J. H., Koh, J. E., Kim, H. E., Lee, H. J., & Song, S. (2018). Current status of nursing law in the United States and implications. Health Systems and Policy Research, 5(1), 1-7.

Snavely, T. M. (2016). A brief economic analysis of the looming nursing shortage in the United States. Nursing Economics, 34(2), 98-101.

World Health Organization. (2016). Global strategy on human resources for health: workforce 2030.

World Health Organization. (2017). Health Workforce Requirements for Universal Health Coverage and The Sustainable Development Goals.