Nursing Shortage Essay

Abstract Globally, a nursing shortage is impeding the advancement of healthcare systems around the world. The nursing shortage refers to any situation in which the labor market cannot keep up with patient demands. Causes of the nursing shortage include poor working conditions leading to high turnover rates, insufficient nursing education programs, and lack of incentives for nurses to work in areas of critical concern. Effects of the nursing shortage include further staff shortages due to high stress environments and poor patient care—including higher rates of mortality and morbidity.

Nursing shortages have affected almost every region of the world, and may become worse unless concerted efforts are made to remedy the problem.  Introduction Even the most advanced healthcare systems in the world are short on nursing staff. As a result, existing nurses are working longer hours under high duress, and are more prone to making errors or experiencing workplace violence and abuse. Patients are dying from preventable causes or becoming ill due to inefficient nursing care.

If nothing is done soon to mitigate the nursing shortage, the entire globe could witness major crises in healthcare delivery.  Nurses have recently made inroads to improve the role and status of the profession, but much more needs to be done. The burgeoning patient population implies ever-increasing demand for qualified nursing staff, but there is no real plan in place anywhere to ensure that enough nurses will be staffed at the healthcare institutions or in the communities in which they are needed most.

Nursing education programs at the level of higher education are overburdened, and even qualified students eager to participate in the healthcare professions are turned down daily due to lack of teaching faculty. The nursing shortage has reached a critical point, requiring effective policy intervention. What is a Nursing Shortage? A nursing shortage refers to an insufficient number of nursing professionals. Therefore, a nursing shortage is a staff shortage. Nursing is an incredibly broad and diverse field, encompassing a wide range of specializations within clinical practice.

In addition to clinical practice, nurses can work in education to teach the future generation of nursing professionals. A nursing shortage may refer to any specific situation in which there are fewer nurses than are required to meet current or projected patient demands. Nursing shortages generally occur in specific geographic regions. Areas that are especially vulnerable to nursing shortages include those in which the patient population is growing while the nursing staff is shrinking.

Currently, nursing shortages have become chronic issues around the world but do affect some areas more than others. As demand for healthcare services rise, there will be a corresponding need for more nursing staff. Ironically, increases in quality of care worldwide have contributed to the nursing shortage. Better healthcare services mean increased longevity, which in turn leads to increasing demands for nurses throughout the course of a patient’s lifetime.

Similarly, the more wealth accumulated worldwide, the higher the demand for healthcare services will be among populations who even just a generation ago could not access or afford healthcare services. Why is There a Nursing Shortage? The simplest way of describing the nursing shortage is in terms of basic economics: supply and demand. Currently, the demand for nurses far outweighs the supply of nurses in the labor pool.

In spite of the fact that many nurses are willing to relocate for work, there are still chronic nursing shortages in some areas because the number of nurses entering the profession simply cannot keep pace with the rising population and the increased demands for healthcare services. In the United States and other wealthy nations, the population has been aging rapidly. The rapidly aging population has further increased the demand for nurses but nursing schools cannot keep pace with this demand.

Nursing education is therefore a primary reason why there is a nursing shortage. Even though the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and other countries have quality nursing education programs, there are only so many schools with only so many teaching faculty in those schools. Until nursing education programs expand exponentially, it is likely that the nursing shortage will continue. After all, the population continues to grow and also to age.

With greater numbers of seniors seeking treatment for both acute and chronic conditions, the demand for nurses is likely to keep increasing. Globalization also leads to increasing demands for nurses worldwide. Unfortunately, though, nurses from developing countries have strong financial incentives to move from their home countries to nations in which they will receive higher pay and greater opportunities for career advancement.

To fill nursing staff shortages in developed nations means taking away from the labor pool in developing countries.  The nature of healthcare service delivery has also been changing, leading to the current situation of a nursing shortage. More and more people are relying on ambulatory care services and are using nurses instead of a physician as the primary point of entry into the healthcare system (Oulton, 2006).

If more and more people expect to see a nurse right away, then the shortage is likely to continue until something is done to increase the number of nurses in the labor pool. High turnover rates within the nursing profession are also a reason for the diminished labor supply. Burnout, stress, experiences with violence or abuse, low pay, and low power within healthcare organizations are only a few of the reasons why nurses have a relatively high turnover rate.

High turnover means fewer nurses to fill patient needs, which actually results in a vicious cycle. As hospitals and clinics lose key nursing staff, the remaining nurses shoulder the burden and work too long and hard. The resulting burnout leads to even more vacancies in nursing staff. Causes of the Nursing Shortage Causes of the nursing shortage are linked both to supply and demand. Supply-side issues begin with an insufficient number of slots in nurse education programs.

Nurse education begins with undergraduate (Baccalaureate) degrees and continues into advanced degree programs such as Masters and PhD programs. The Registered Nurse and the Licensed Nurse Practitioner are only two of many professional designations for nurses in the United States. Advanced practitioners can also specialize in areas like pediatrics or gerontology. Even though quality higher education programs for nurses do exist around the world, there is a shortage of teaching staff.

Current nursing faculty at most colleges and universities around the world have dwindled, due to aging but also to issues like low pay relative to other positions in the field (Allen, 2008). Therefore, few nurses with advanced degrees are motivated to enter the teaching profession because they would prefer the higher status and higher pay conferred upon employment in a clinical setting (Allen, 2008).  An aging nursing staff is also contributing to the nursing shortage in some regions.

Canada has been especially aware of an age-related supply problem in the nursing profession. About half of all Canadian nurses will be retiring within the next 15 years, but there are currently not enough new graduates available to fill their vacancies (Oulton, 2006). Another supply-side cause of the nursing shortage is related to working conditions within the clinical setting. Nursing shortages are in part traceable to the poor working conditions and relatively low pay nurses receive, leading to the high turnover rates in the profession.

Turnover can be attributed to several factors including burnout. Violence on the job is also a major issue in nursing. Research shows nurses are among the most vulnerable professions for both verbal and physical abuse (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2019).  Moreover, the organizational culture of healthcare contributes to high turnover rates in nursing. According to Laschinger & Finegan (2005), lack of trust and lack of respect are some of the reasons for high employee turnover among nurses.

Burnout and job strain also lead to absenteeism and turnover, which compounds the problem of the nursing shortage. Oddly, burnout and job strain are also common effects of the nursing shortage because of the high demands placed on existing nursing staff due to the shortage. Demand-side causes of the nursing shortage include changes to population and demographics, as well as changes to how the healthcare system functions in a society. Growing populations generally mean increased demand for healthcare services.

When the population is growing older, the demand for healthcare services increases even more rapidly due to the increased risk for chronic and acute conditions.  An aging population is actually a sign that the healthcare system is doing its job well. Unfortunately, an aging population also means that more and more people will expect healthcare services. Unless the labor pool changes, the demand will continue to outweigh supply.  Demand for nurses is also increasing in new areas and among new populations.

People in developing countries are demanding improvements to healthcare services more than ever before, but the nursing shortages in developing countries is usually even worse than it is in the United States and other wealthy nations because of the brain drain phenomenon (Oulton, 2006). Trained nursing staff leaves developing nations to seek higher pay in other countries, thereby worsening the nursing shortage in their home countries. Because nurses have become more highly trained and specialized within the healthcare professions, patients are demanding to see nurses more now than ever before.

Increased demand has not resulted yet in the increased supply of trained and licensed nursing professionals. Unless something is done soon, the nursing shortage could reach a crisis point. It is not as if hospitals are refusing to hire new staff because they cannot afford it. On the contrary, many healthcare institutions would love to hire new nursing staff but there are not enough qualified nurses to fill the needed positions.

Until nursing schools can grant more degrees to more people, and until job placement more truly reflects the needs of the population, the shortage is likely to continue. Effects of the Nursing Shortage The nursing shortage results in decreased quality of care: the biggest and potentially most severe outcome. With fewer nurses to meet patient needs, the risk for medication errors, procedural errors, patient re-admissions, failure to save, and other problems also rise.

Research has already shown that the rates of morbidity and mortality have risen due to the nursing shortage (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2019). Overcrowding of hospitals and other facilities and a stressed-out nursing staff are also leading to poor perceptions of the quality of care among patients. Thus, healthcare institutions with nursing shortages risk losing patients and also risk costly litigation. The nursing shortage has both humanitarian and financial repercussions.  In fact, the nursing shortage results in exponential problems.

As more nurses leave the workplace because of retirement, burnout, or moving to another state or country, they leave behind a vacuum. That vacuum has to be filled by existing nursing staff, which is then expected to work longer hours, take fewer breaks, and work faster. Burnout can cause those nurses to leave the job, and can also cause treatment errors that can be deadly.  The nursing shortage results in poorer healthcare outcomes, in spite of advancements in medical technologies.

Nursing shortages are of course more likely to impact the most vulnerable populations: those who cannot afford to receive the upper echelon of care in their area. The nursing shortage means less access to preventative medicine including vaccinations, and less access to early interventions that could prevent problems and reduce mortality rates. Thus, the nursing shortage can also exacerbate healthcare disparities even while healthcare services have become more equitably distributed around the world.

Nursing Shortage Statistics Official data related to the nursing shortage is shocking, serving as a call to action among policymakers. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over one million additional nurses are needed globally by 2020. The additional nurses need to be trained and licensed, but there are not enough nursing programs yet that can fill the demand.

Every year, tens of thousands of nursing school applicants are being turned down not because they do not meet admissions requirements but because there are simply not enough nursing schools, programs, or teaching faculty to support them. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, more than 60,000 “qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs” were turned away due to insufficient resources including not enough faculty (Rosseter, 2017, p. 1).  The nursing shortage has affected different areas differently.

In Europe, between 3,000 and 20,000 nursing vacancies each year depending on the country (Oulton, 2006). In the United States, vacancy numbers are as high as 126,000.