NURSING SHORTAGE

Nursing Shortage

Nursing Shortage

Introduction

It is obvious that the prediction of nursing shortage in the next decade is a reality, but the problem is actually focusing on the supply of experienced nurses in the year 2010. Another issue involves lack of experienced faculty member and the rapid aging of the nurses today. Women have abundant job opportunity that can provide a conducive, safe environment, pension plan, retirement plan, and self worth and respect compared to the nursing profession. Unless these issues are resolved, recruitment and retention of nurses will be affected.

Nurses are also faced with ethical dilemma that forces re-evaluating the reason why we entered the profession in the first place. Nurses are forced to choose between providing quality care and dealing with rapid changes and adjustment in health care institution's budget. (Brand 2003)

Discussion

Part of this paper is to provide information on monetary and non-monetary reward, and most of the research has concluded that retention of registered nurses in any given health care facility or working environment, requires more than a fat pay check if any. According to William M. Mercer(1999) story, the increase in work demand of nurses was the highest problem contributing to nursing retention, then job dissatisfaction, work load, staffing problems. (Nursing Advocacy 2006)

To increase recruitment of nurses, programs should be provide to encourage young men and women into the profession, there would be no need to recruit specialty staff if employers will invest in the specialized registered nurses that exist in the facility. Train them to be good preceptors, educators, mentors and clinical advisors. Also most of the new nurses are employed to work night shift, they are excited after experiencing the great number of multidisciplinary team involved during the day only to find out that night shift is totally different. This sometimes discourages nurse retention.

To increase retention, the older nurses need to be well taken care of. The current average age of a nurses today is about mid- 40's, ages of nurses 30 years and below is about 10%. Even though age is not a predictor of retention of nurses, losing the experienced nurses who would share their knowledge with the young ones is main problem. It was noted that in Belgium (William 2000), Expert used shorter working time to retain the older experienced nurses. Example, 45 years and older will work for 36hours and receive pay for 38 hours, and 55 years and over worked 32 hours and received pay for 38 hours. (Hilton 2003)

Education

The faculty nurses are also aging too. Both Masters and Doctorate prepared nurses are declining, causing inability to accept qualified applicants in the Nursing field. In the hospital, nurse educators with masters prepared degree are declining. Facilities need to encourage and provide financial recourse to prepare masters prepared nurses, who in turn will provide staff development. (HRSA 2002)

Compensation

While there is an increase in acute care nurses salary to about 51/2 percent in the 90's, Management and administration do not get a raise because they are ...