Nursing shortage in America
Sheelar Moo
Vermont Technical College
Nursing shortage in America
The American population is slowly aging as the baby boomers are entering the stage where they need more medical services. The American population demographic has changed over the years. Currently, the US has a higher number of people at the age of 65 years and above. By 2029, the remaining generation of baby boomers will have attained the age of retirement. This will take the population of citizens aged over 65 years to 71 million (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2018). The increase in the number of senior citizens will only lead to more duties for the nurses. This is because as people grow old, their need for health services increases. Already, the number of registered nurses in the US is not enough to handle the population. When the last of the baby boomers join the senior citizens, the nurses will be overworked because they will be required to handle more cases at a time.
Nurses make up the largest population of healthcare professionals. According to the 2016 World Health Organization Report, the total number of nurses and midwives in the world is about 29 million. Only 3.9 of this population are located in the US (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2018). The nurses are the principal assistants to the other medical professionals. Moreover, they are the primary caregivers during the recovery process. The number of nurses should be proportional to the patient population; however, there is a shortage of nurses in America because of poor policies, which lead to unfavorable working conditions. The shortage of nurses has contributed significantly to nursing burnout, unsafe work environment and poor quality of healthcare service provision because the few available nurses are overstretched.
Con: Nursing burnout
The shortage in the nursing sector is because of burnout. Currently, there are fewer nursing faculties thus resulting in fewer students. The limitation in the number of faculties has also greatly affected the quality of the nursing programs. The decline in the quality of nursing programs and number of enrolments has led to many nursing graduates quitting shortly after registration. A huge number of these graduates begin work only to realize that the profession is not what they had expected it to be (Halcomb et al, 2018). Moreover, the graduates experience professional burnouts after a while because they are made to handle many cases at a go. The volume and work schedule make it difficult for them to attain a work-family balance. In the end, they are overwhelmed and they leave the professional together. The nursing turnover rate in the US is between 8.8% and 37.0% (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2018), an issue that has greatly contributed to the nursing shortage. This leaves the medical facilities with lesser nurses to care for the growing number of patients.
Gender biased in nursing profession
The lack of gender balance in the nursing profession is also partly to blame for the shortage in the nursing professionals. As it stands, it appears that most people regard nursing as a profession for the female gender. Therefore, most male students refuse to take nursing as an option. The result has been that females overpopulate the profession. During their active years, female nurses are forced to take several leaves of absence to take care of their pregnancies or young ones (Halcomb et al, 2018). Some childbearing women nurses have had to abandon the profession or to minimize their practice hours because of the need to take care of their infants. After, a while, those who had temporarily discontinued their practice find it hard to return and opt to pursue other professions that are less involving, effectively creating a shortage in the number of nurses.
Increased cases of violence in the medical care sector have also contributed to the shortage of nurses. The nurses work in a stressful environment. They are faced with the potential for emotional and physical abuse by the patients and their relatives. The physical and emotional insults take away the feeling of job satisfaction (Abdullah, 2015). The psychiatric nurses and the nurses at the emergency departments usually deal with patients and relatives who are in intense states of mind. Many times, the relatives of the patients turn the heat on the nurses because of the desperation to have their patients get well quickly. In the cases where the hospital administration has failed to create policies and regulations to protect the nurses, they become an easy target for even physical assaults. According to Mahlmeister (2017), 51 % of nurses who participated in 2013 job satisfaction and career plans survey of RN said they were worry that their job are affecting their health (Mahlmeister, 2017). The threat of abuse puts a lot of pressure on nurses who in turn decide to quit the profession to attain the peace of mind.
Pro of nursing shortages
Nonetheless, the shortage of nurses has introduced its own merits. It is believed that when something is scarce its value increases and the same is true of the nursing profession. When there are few nurses, the value of the nursing profession becomes conspicuous and nurses are appreciated even more (Gelinas, 2017). Hospitals with a good number of nurses are grateful and those that are not able to deliver quality services due to a shortage in nurses feel the pain of not having adequate staffing as far as nurses are concerned. Furthermore, when nurses have a higher value, hospitals are more willing to pay them well to reduce turnover. Often, there is the assumption that there are many nurses; therefore, some aspiring nurses drop out of college because they presume they will not succeed or it is a profession not worth pursuing. However, when there is a shortage of nurses, the value of nursing becomes obvious and any aspiring nurse will be able to realize this value and have hope for becoming a successful nurse in the future.
Another advantage of the nursing shortage is that it helps to distinguish the productive nurses from the dysfunctional ones. When dealing with a few nurses, those who are productive stand out and it enables hospitals to give them the resources, motivation, and awards they deserve to keep up the good work. Conversely, it makes it possible to identify the nurses that are dysfunctional so that a hospital can do something to either enable them to improve or replace them with others who deserve the position. Ultimately, when there are many nurses in the medical industry, some nurses end up doing other duties that are not part of their job description because all duties that nurses do have already been taken care of. This leads to some nurses feeling like they studied nursing for nothing. Therefore, the shortage of nurses implies that nurses get to do what they trained to do and they do it well. It gives the active nurses a sense of fulfillment since they get to help people as they aspired (Gelinas, 2017).
Conclusion
In conclusion, the shortage of nurses in the US is because of poor nursing policies, nursing burnout and unsafe work environment which leads to unfavorable working conditions. Nursing is a call to serve others. The nurses give themselves up for the service of humanity by being there for the patients during the entire time when they need care the most. For instance, the needs of nursing services are growing yet the population of the nurses is declining. The remaining fewer nurses are overburdened with work since they are forced to handle more than they can manage. Policies should be implement to protected nurses in workplace and keep nurses safe so they are more opt to stay in the field on nursing.
References
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Gelinas, L. (2017). Advantages of a nursing shortage. American Nurse Today, 12(7), 4.
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Haddad, L & Toney-Butler, J. (2018). Nursing shortage. NCBI.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
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