The Shortage of Nurses in the USA

Human Resources

There are various reasons for the current and projected shortage of the physicians and the RNs in the U.S. and several other developed nations. Some of the outstanding reasons are the increased demand for the services of the nurses which is occasioned by the increase of the ageing population, estimated to go up by 18% come 2020 meaning the demand, hence shortage that is already being experienced will not end soon. Other career options also makes it hard for nurses to be available in the required numbers since as the years progress, more as people opt for careers in the IT industry and such technology related fields. By 1975 it was estimated that 40% less women opted for nursing careers as compared to the 1950s. Wages is yet another significant factor that has led to lower nursing school enrollment since the wage scales in nursing have failed to keep pace with the inflation since the 1990s yet the pressure and work environment have not made things any easier, leading many to other careers (Keenan P. & Kennedy J.F., 2003).

Competency at work is the possession of the requisite skills, knowledge and attributes as well as the desirable behavior in the workplace that enables one to effectively undertake their responsibilities and duties. These can be measured by the relevant authorities evaluating the competency and gaps there in through an agreed upon process. The other approach is the use of competency assessment worksheet which enables the individual employee to gauge their ability against the expectations of the particular organization. The third is the holistic assessment which involves the evaluation of several competencies and not just one and also done in relation to the user of the service (Dillon S., 2016).

Leadership

There are various stakeholders in most organizations; the corporate stakeholders who often hold the majority of the shares and their actions can affect the organization and the actions of the organization can also affect them. There are the internal stakeholders are those who have stake or shares of the organization and also work directly within the organization such as the investors, owner and the employees. The third category are the external stakeholders who are people outside the organization, they do not work for the organization but can be affected by the actions within and of the organization, such are the customers, suppliers, government, trade unions, the community and creditors as well (BBC, 2014).

Planning is the process of putting in place a schedule and related actions that need to be executed or implemented to ensure the organization moves towards the vision. These actions and implementation of the schedules could be involving daily actions to achieve daily targes, also referred to as operational planning, or could be geared towards long-term actions and prolonged implementation of the same which is referred to as strategic plan. These may involve resources, time, workforce and even stakeholders input to achieve both the strategic and operational plans (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2015).

Statistics

Mean; is used when the central tendencies are being sought in a series and can be both in discrete and continuous data, though used more in continuous data. You add the sum of all the values in the data set then divide by the number of values in the data set.

Mode; this is referred to as the most frequent score in a data set and is used to find out the most popular option.

Median; is the middle score in a data set arranged in an increasing order and the median is less affected by the value of the skewed data and outliers.

Standard deviation; is the measure of how numbers are spread out in a given data set. When the values are tightly bunched around the mean, then the bell-shaped curve is steep.

Pareto charts; are bar graphs with the bars drawn in a decreasing order of frequency used to show the graphically the relative importance of the differences that exist between groups of data presented.