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Government
Examine an issue of current relevance to Public Policymaking. As you consider topics, remember that this policy paper should contain a comprehensive assessment of the intended policy and its potential consequences. When you write your paper, you should think of yourself as a staff person who must advise a policy maker facing a problem that must be resolved in the near future. As the staff person, adopt one of the four perspectives to public administration and frame your responses around your chosen approach
This is the problem
There is a high turnover of nurses in the United States.
Consider these startling facts that have recently been released:
In the July/August 2009 Health Affairs, Dr. Peter Buerhaus and coauthors found that despite the current easing of the nursing shortage due to the recession, the U.S. nursing shortage is projected to grow to 260,000 registered nurses by 2025. A shortage of this magnitude would be twice as large as any nursing shortage experienced in this country since the mid-1960s. In the article titled The Recent Surge In Nurse Employment: Causes And Implications, the researchers point to a rapidly aging workforce as a primary contributor to the projected shortage. (Am. Assoc. Of Colleges of Nursing: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage)
In the November 26, 2008 Journal of the American Medical Association, workforce analyst Dr. Peter Buerhaus stated: "Over the next 20 years, the average age of the RN will increase and the size of the workforce will plateau as large numbers of RNs retire. Because demand for RNs is expected to increase during this time, a large and prolonged shortage of nurses is expected to hit the U.S. In the latter half of the next decade." (ibid.)
According to a report released by the American Health Care Association in July 2008, more than 19,400 RN vacancies exist in long-term care settings. These vacancies, coupled with an additional 116,000 open positions in hospitals reported by the American Hospital Association in July 2007, bring the total RN vacancies in the U.S....
To more than 135,000. This translates into a national RN vacancy rate of 8.1%. (Am. Assoc. Of Colleges of Nursing: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage)
Whist more people have turned to nursing and retained their jobs as a result of the recession, statistics finds that people not only prefer other professions but that disinclination towards nursing is growing rather than decreasing. Pulse, for instance, found that 44% of hospital CEOs had more difficulty recruiting RNs in 2006 than in 2005. The news is not going to get better: in the next 5 years, 55% of surveyed nurses are intending to retire. In that same time -- according to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) - the nation's nursing shortage will increase to more than one million nurses. Analysts, furthermore show, that this shortage will extend to all 50 states without exception and that the effects of the shortage will be felt by 2015...
It is, therefore, never too soon to start putting some policy in place to reverse this situation.
Examining the problem, it seems to me that the nursing shortage and high turnover is largely, although not exclusively, due to the fact that nurses get paid minimal wage.
Dean (2008), for instance, showed that the one of the factors that is most responsible for inducing nurses to quit, particularly nurses who have a heavy work-life balance and have low economic standards, is wages and working conditions. The working conditions are being seen to. Wage is something that still needs to be addressed. Nurse turnover is problematic for the United States in at least two ways:
1. Nurse turnover is expensive for the State
Nurse turnover can be expensive for the institution as a whole. The last thing our nation wants to do is accrue greater medical expense. today's number one issue for any particular company (medical institutions included) is finding and retaining new employees and even more challenging is finding employees that will help the company progress and move forward. This means that employees -- and here we have in mind…
Sources
Am. Assoc. Of Colleges of Nursing: Nursing Shortage.
http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage
Bakker, A., Van Emmerik, H., & Van Riet, P. (2008). How job demands, resources, and burnout predict objective performance: A constructive replication. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 21(3), 309-324.
Dean, H (2008) Flexibility or Flexploitation. In Tony Maltby, Patricia Kennett, Kirstein Rummery, Social Policy Review 20: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy (Chap. 6), USA: The Policy Press.
The Principles of Machiavelli in American Policy The first chapter in The Practice of American Public Policymaking lays out what the book examines in the succeeding chapters. First, Briggs and Helms (2015) define policymaking as “the activities, actors, institutions, practices, and technologies that combine to ‘deliver the goods’ to the American people” (p. 3). Public policy is defined as “the art and science of producing results” (p. 3). Thus, the book
The pluralist school is believed to have best "captured the dynamics of the bargaining process among different interest groups trying to influence the policy process, and between these groups and policy makers (Lindblom and Woodhouse, 1993; as cited by Rosetti, 1999) in the view of Lindblom and Woodhouse the limitations that exist in terms of limitations on knowledge is readily available during the electoral process in the U.S. These
An examination of the four basic steps of policymaking reveals this quite clearly. The first step in the policymaking process is the agenda setting that must come before policies are even considered. Bringing problems to the attention of policy makers and thus setting the policy agenda is accomplished by many different players with different aims, from citizen groups to businesses to media organizations and many others. All of these groups
public administration and considers the effect of their writings and theories on the field of public administration. It has 6 sources. An analysis of the core areas of public administration and how these areas interrelate with one another; taking into account the theories and writings of major players in the field of public administration and how their views shaped these areas. The principles of public administration are the clearest description of
If we can institute more policies to make STEM education within our higher education system more inclusive, we can assume that this diversity will make STEM attractive to minority students. In order for policy makers to know where to begin with minority students, they need to know what is preventing them from getting a good STEM education, what factors have contributed to minorities who are successful in this field and
The trial lasted seven months and Justice Leland Degrasse rendered his decision, 719 N.Y.S.2d 475 on January 10, 2001, in favor of plaintiffs and ordered the state to ensure that all public schools provide the opportunity for a sound basic education to their students." (Hunter, 2004) Entered, as part of this decision was a "costing-out study as the threshold task in developing a new school funding system." (Hunter, 2004)