Nursing Shortages
A Nursing Issue of Concern for All Americans
The future of healthcare within the United States is expected to encounter a new age of obstacles. These obstacles present new issues that the healthcare industry has not yet endured since the creation of organized healthcare. One of the most influential issues facing the healthcare of America is the increasing nursing shortage. The general population outside of the healthcare industry is significantly ignorant to the consequences of this foremost issue.
Nurses encompass the largest licensed sector of the United States health care system (Olgesby, 2007). With this understanding, it is expected, that with a greatly increasing shortage of nurses, the ability to care for a growing retiring population will be disastrous. Little effort is dedicated to minimizing this nursing issue, and in a short time, it will become a consumer and community issue. Today, emergency departments (EDs) are experiencing much longer waiting times in part due to the staffing; the market for qualified Emergency Department Nurses is greatly declining. Not only are EDs experiencing staffing issues, but medical/surgical nursing and cardiac-specialty nursing are feeling the strain as well.
To produce quality, well-educated nurses, nursing faculty is essential. Every year, as it is reported, nursing schools all over the country decline the admission of qualified candidates into their nursing programs (Nally, 2008). Nursing educators’ salaries are not nearly as comparable to that of the clinical nurse, or those at the bedside providing primary care (Nally, 2008). Salary benefits to the nursing educator are much lower than that of other educators which greatly impacts the desire for seasoned nurses to advance in their careers to have a desire to instruct others into the profession.
The cascading downfall of staffing in the nursing profession is influential to many other areas of healthcare. In a typical hospital, perhaps with 300 inpatient beds available to care for patients, half of those beds are closed due to the inability to retain a nurse to care for the patients assigned to those beds. As a result, patients that have been admitted from the emergency department, who themselves have a shortage of nursing to care for emergent patients, have to hold their admitted patients in the emergency department. This reduces the amount of available emergency department beds to treat emergency patients. With the reduction of available emergency department beds available to treat emergency patients, those patients are forced to wait for patient movement in the waiting room. The end result is that people either become sicker or they leave without a medical examination at their own will.
What is the consumer to do when he needs medical attention? Education pertaining to preventative health and personal responsibility is the key. The consumer should make every effort to keep a healthy lifestyle to prevent the more serious issues that are preventable. Regarding the nursing shortage, there is no relief in sight for now.
References:
Nally, T.L. (2008). Nurse faculty shortage: The case for action. Journal of Emergency Nursing, (34), pp. 243-245.
Olgesby, R. (2007). Recruitment and retention: Benefits of EMT-Paramedic utilization during ED nursing shortages. Journal of Emergency Nursing, (33), pp. 21-25.
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