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Nursing Shortage
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Nursing Shortage
Nurses are essential part of medical care and comprise a significant number in healthcare
system. Nursing is in all communities where nurses provide competent medical related care from
birth till end of life. Nursing practice encompasses a wide range of roles such as, direct patient
care and management, control of complex care scenarios, and development of quality assurance
procedures. Despite the enormous benefits of nursing in healthcare settings, nursing shortage is a
national healthcare issue that urgently needs to be addressed. Nursing shortage greatly
undermines the general healthcare sector. The issue of nursing shortage is not new, but this
healthcare stressor has significantly risen in the past few years. Some of the causes of current
nursing shortage include, aging nursing workforce, bottleneck of new nurses, nurse burnout, and
aging population.
Nursing profession continues to experience shortage and it is negatively impacting the
work setting in nursing sector. Due to nursing shortages, nurses often work for long hours
beyond their shift’s hours and under unfavorable working conditions. Extreme over-working
leads to tiredness, injury, and occupation discontent. Nurses that experience harsh work
conditions are prone to medical errors which may endanger patient’s life. Increase in patient
mortality is an adverse impact of nursing shortage. Research shows that there exists a
relationship between understaffed medical facilities and increase in patients’ deaths (Solodev,
2019). Hospitals experience financial constrains due to nursing shortage in order to cope with the
shortage. Healthcare organizations pay high salaries to the employed nurses, which is
approximately double the initial amount for hourly nursing services. The salary increment is due
to high demand from COVID-19 along with nursing shortage.
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In approximation, the number of registered nurses globally is 29 million and that of
midwives sums up to 1.9 million. In the US, the total number of nurses and midwives is
approximately 3.9 million and an estimate of one million more nurses is needed by 2022
(Haddad et al., 2020). Vacancies in nursing profession are estimated to be higher in 2022
compared to other fields. Estimation of employment of 11 million more nurses will be required
to prevent further nursing shortage. Nursing employment rate is estimated to increase by 15%
come year 2029.
To summarize the articles, “nursing shortage” by Haddad et al 2020 and “Addressing the
perioperative nursing shortage through education: A perioperative imperative” by Beitz, 2019, on
the issue of nursing shortages; it is evident that nursing shortage has been an issue for a while
and if not addressed, healthcare organizations continue to suffer. Aging population is one of the
major reasons for nursing shortage, as population ages they develop conditions thus increase
demand for healthcare services. Limited nurse supply and nurse burnout also greatly contribute
to nurse shortage as indicated in the article “nursing shortage” by Haddad et al 2020. I agree with
their findings because nursing turnover is levelling off after stable increase over the years.
Nursing shortage has been addressed differently in various organizations. Some of the
few remedies that other organizations have taken to solve the issue of nursing shortages include;
nurses’ empowerment to motivate nurses, incorporation of new technology in nursing to make
nursing duties less hectic, assisting nursing programs, and hiring of international nurse to occupy
the vacant nursing positions.
The above strategies may be slow processes but they address the issue of nursing
shortage accordingly. To summarize the above articles, new technologies like use of various
applications to monitor schedules and credentials help nursing tasks to be less tedious. Electronic
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records help reduce paperwork among nurses. EMRs and informatics reduces nurse burnouts by
reducing direct patient care areas. Employment of international nurses is another strategy that
greatly addresses the challenge of nursing shortage. Nurses from abroad help to address the high
demand of nurses due to COVID-19 pandemic, and links the gap between graduates and nurses
on retirement timeline. International nurses require an experience of approximately five to ten
years before employment into the US. Hospital interventions in learning institutions to train
nursing students, is a strategy that can help equip new nurses with the experience needed for the
ultimate nursing practice.
Legislation is another strategy used by some organizations to address the impact of
nursing shortage in their facilities. States have been working with legislators to pass laws about
the patient-to-nurse ratio (Solodev, 2019). This legislation is to reduce nurse overworking but it
has a negative impact which is to reduce hospital capacity. Employment of international nurses
may have negative impacts. Nurses from abroad may bring in the new strain of COVID-19
variants and also, a lot of resources is needed to hire nurses from other countries.
Inexperience is a challenge in recruitment of new nursing graduates. Retiring nurses need
replacement but it is difficult to get new graduates with the same level of experience as those
retiring. Lack of experience may delay the graduation of new nurses which in turn affects the
filling of the gaps left by experienced nurses after retirement. High treatment cost is a negative
impact as a result of expensive technology in nursing. Equipment malfunction, lack of
information by patients, organs and cells damage by medical equipment are some of the negative
impacts that accompany the utilization of new technology in nursing to address nursing shortage.
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References
Beitz, J. M. (2019, September 27). Addressing the perioperative nursing shortage through
education: A perioperative imperative. AORN
Journal. https://aornjournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aorn.12805
Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2020). Nursing shortage. StatPearls
[Internet].
Solodev. (2019, June 5). 5 long term effects of the nursing shortage. Registered Nurse Staffing
and Recruitment Agency. https://avanthealthcare.com/blog/effects-of-nursing-
shortage.stml
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