Nursing Define the Problem Today, There Is

¶ … Nursing Define the Problem Today, there is a serious problem within the nursing field. There is a huge shortage of nurses in general, but an even greater shortage of nurses with higher levels of education. This ultimately means there are less capable nursing staff that can take on specialty and leadership roles. Unfortunately, "without a more educated nursing workforce, the nation's health will be further at risk" (Tri-Council of Nursing, 2010).

Without greater numbers of RNs with advanced degrees, there is only so much the available nursing population can contribute within the field of healthcare. It is clear that "nurses with advanced education are needed in large numbers to serve as teachers, scientists, primary care givers, specialists, and leaders throughout the healthcare delivery system" (Tri-Council of Nursing, 2010). Currently, there is a huge shortage of more advanced nursing specialists and practitioners.

As the nation's healthcare demands continue to grow and get more complex, more advanced nurses will be needed to meet the increasing demand. There is an increasing aging population with more advanced and complicated health demands than ever before (Nueser, 2013). This population needs more educated nurses to best care for them. Unfortunately, this problem has been increasing over the past several decades. For the last twenty years, there has been an increasing gap in how many advanced nurses are needed, and how many are actually there to fill demand.

There has been a goal set by the Institute of Medicine's Future of Nursing "that calls for increasing the proportion of nurses with baccalaureate degrees to 80% by 2020" (Pecci, 2013). This places a huge goal over the next few years to dramatically increase the numbers of advanced education nurses. Ultimately, this has a huge significance to patient care. More nurses trained in higher degrees and in more specific specializations ultimately leads to better patient care (Pecci, 2013).

With more nurses expanding their knowledge and skill sets, patients will see huge improvements in the quality of care, but also the innovation coming from nurses on their care giving team. The research suggests that "critical care units with higher percentages of RNs holding national specialty certifications had lower rates of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI)" (Pecci, 2012). Clearly, the greater training a nurse has, the more capable that nurse is at providing the highest quality of care.

Higher trained nurses can also share their knowledge with the rest of their team and thus improve care functioning of entire nursing populations. The major goals here are to get more RNs to invest in higher education. Nurses hoping to expand their education through attending high education can help improve the quality of care for millions of Americans.

The Tri-Council of Nursing, including the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Nurses Association, and the National League for Nursing, has made it clear that it wants to encourage nurses all over the country to increase their scope and skill sets through higher education within nursing (Tri-Council of Nursing, 2010). There are a number of strategies for buy in, including opening up more funding opportunities for higher education in nursing programs. Nurses also benefit themselves from achieving degrees from higher education.

In fact, the research suggests that 88% of new BSN graduates had multiple lucrative job offers only months after graduating (Nueser, 2013). This can serve as an incentive to get more nurses back into educational programs that will advance their skill sets and help provide for the type of advanced nursing needs this nation is in such desperate need of. Measure / Data Collection A survey of the existing research that provides statistics to show how alarming the problem is becoming, but also to provide foundation for the most potentially successful solutions.

The projected numbers of needed advanced nursing specialists, as well as the goals for future benchmarks, all need to be documented within the context of this research in order to show how dire the problem is and create a foundation for potential solutions. The research was.