Nurse Shortage
The nursing shortage is considered as one of the major challenges that affect the healthcare system and the delivery of quality services. This challenge can alter the healthcare industry and additional organizational frameworks if administrators and nurse leaders within the field fail to manage appropriately. Various factors that are likely to result in nurse shortage comprise of low payment, exhaustion, physical injuries, emotional strain, hospital acuity, unsuitable working atmosphere, and low motivational levels. Nurses suffering in these atmospheres are more disposed to making slip-ups and medical inaccuracies. Therefore, it is vital for the concerned authorities to come up with long-term solutions to address the challenge.
Causes of Nurse Shortage
The key aspect affecting most nurses in leading their profession entails poor salaries and wages. Nurses are crucial in the community; however, they are paid low salaries compared to their associates in other occupations. Each year, nurses are compelled to resign or engage in industrial action as a technique of compelling the concerned bodies to increase their salaries. The partial payment has made most health practitioners opt for greener pastures in nations where wages are deemed to be high. Another major factor attributed to nurse shortage involves unconducive working environments. A majority of health amenities fail to provide a conducive environment for nurses to execute their mandates. For instance, during the Covid 19, healthcare facilities lack significant care equipment such as personal protective equipment, such as gloves, dust coats, protective glass wear, and boots to safeguard against bodily injuries and biohazards.
Another significant aspect leading to nurse shortage involves nursing burnout. When patients are in critical conditions, the health practitioners may not be accorded adequate rest to facilitate the containment of the situation. Stress levels amongst nurses are high as compared to other professions. When health practitioners seek other forms of service aside from the nursing practices, a high turnover is experienced. This results in the employment of health practitioners that may not be adequately qualified as most health facilities sought to fill gaps left by departing nurses.
In most cases, the concerned stakeholders fail to initiate appropriate mechanisms to address the concerns. Nurses are also stressed because although they are engaged for long hours under extreme pressure to battle the pandemic, they believe they are not receiving adequate compensation for effectively trying to contain the situation (Haddad 1). Eventually opting to change their profession as their last course of action.
Solutions
The nursing shortage is a troublesome development. The shortage makes it challenging to execute the given mandates while matching patient care and developing a good working culture that inspires the retention of health personnel. When seeking to battle the challenge of a nurse shortage, some of the possible solutions mainly involve all stakeholders working together to make certain that the challenge is resolved on a worldwide scale. The concern of poor certification attributed to lack of facilities when nurses are in learning institutions ought to be taken as a wake-up call for administrations to ensure that every institution is well adequately equipped to facilitate the training of nurses to solve the nursing shortage. Medical experts such as nurses ought to be permitted to move after a specific period of service delivery since most of them are migrating to industrialized nations leaving behind an awful scene in their native nations, therefore affecting the quality of service delivery, particularly during the pandemic. This gives a chance to nursing students to effectively finish the courses, ultimately joining the industry while adequately prepared.
Personal Perspective
As a health practitioner, I believe that both leadership and management approaches are binding as they all lay emphasis on reducing nursing shortages in health amenities. Notwithstanding that administrators use all the resources but consolidate their decision-making, they are productive in preserving nurses through administering rewards. According to Beitz, an increase in health practitioner’s salaries bears the prospective of growing the number of individuals seeking to be engaged and retained in the profession (419). The management outlook is therefore deemed to be favorable in appealing to new nurses and retaining them. Nonetheless, the leadership outlook that also includes the motivation aspect has a bigger potential of helping people comprehend the challenges within the healthcare structure and certainly tackle them. Moreover, shared obligation in decision-making, as displayed in leadership methods, is vital, and the challenge is more intrinsic in the personnel as compared to the framework.
The nursing sector continues to develop at a rapid rate. With shifting technology, the nursing industry is being compelled to evolve to guarantee that medical facilities can continually provide adequate care. As a nursing expert, it is important to make sure that patient care maintains pace with alterations in the industry. A significant part of the duty necessitates remaining abreast of industry progress to guarantee I am up to date with the latest and supreme clinical practice. From a personal and professional consideration, incorporating this type of approach that embraces various concepts based on the leadership and the management methods appears to be better suited in managing the nurse shortage challenge.
Conclusion
Nurse shortage has been identified as a substantial health challenge that affects health practitioners and patients in regard to the delivery of quality care and services. The nurse shortage is mainly attributed to low motivation levels, inappropriate working atmosphere, partial or poor payments, hospital acuity, burnout, physical injuries, and emotionally strained healthcare institutions. By addressing the stated factors leading to the nursing shortage, the challenge would significantly reduce. Hospital administrators and nurse leaders within the nursing profession may address the challenge by initiating various leadership styles, generating awareness, inspiring workers, and reassuring students in universities to partake in nursing courses through conferences, career talks, and education assemblies.
Works Cited
Beitz, Janice M. “Addressing the perioperative nursing shortage through education: a perioperative imperative.” AORN journal 110.4 (2019): 403-414.
Haddad, Lisa M., Pavan Annamaraju, and Tammy J. Toney-Butler. “Nursing shortage.” StatPearls [Internet] (2020).