Clinical practice

Answer

Nursing Shortage

Nursing shortage is a serious clinical challenge facing various healthcare organisations. The impact of nursing shortage in the clinical settings is great since nurses constitute the largest proportion of the health care workforce in almost all countries (Goodare, 2017). Nursing shortage can lead to poor clinical and health outcomes including low level of patient satisfaction, higher mortality rates and morbidity, increased incidences of errors, and increased failure to rescue rates (Haddad, Annamaraju, & Toney-Butler, 2021). Nursing shortage may be attributed to the difficulty that exist in recruiting and retaining nursing professionals (Mehdaova, 2017).

One of the major causes of nursing shortage is that many nurses is leaving the profession. Over half of nursing workforce feel that they are overworked and underpaid, resulting in some nurses leaving the profession and unmet patient needs. Nurses with a high patient load are likely to report intention to leave, since this leads to lack of time for reflection, exhaustion, and discussion amongst colleagues. On the other hand, nurses who are socially supported by co-workers and supervisors have higher intent to stay. Low quality of teamwork is also significantly associated with intention to leave (Goodare, 2017). Work demands play a key role in determining whether nurses leave the profession or stay. Older nurses see weekends or night shift as the only time they could spend with their families.

Burnout is a psychological concept that contributes to intent to leave the profession. Burnout is defined as depersonalisation, emotional exhaustion, and a reduction in perceived personal accomplishment. Nurses often demonstrate higher levels of emotional exhaustion, which may be linked with diminutive praise and discrepancies in what the individual receives and gives in the workplace. Burnout can also result from the conflict between nursing care priorities and the financial or management priorities, constant changes in working conditions, excessively long working days, ands increased patient demands that can result in stressful organisational atmospheres (Goodare, 2017).   Some nurses graduate and are surprised to discover that the profession is not what they thought it would be. Majority tend to work for some time; while others may experience burnout and leave the profession (Haddad et al., 2021).

Nursing shortage is also associated with lack of potential educators, inequitable workforce distribution, and high turn over. In addition, an aging nursing population, particularly, the baby boomer generation, contributes to nursing shortage due to many nurses reaching retirement age and others experiencing natural attrition. Besides, the aging baby boomer generation in the general population contributes to increased demand for health services. The rationale is that old persons have many diagnoses and comorbidities, which force them to seek treatment. Treatment of long-term conditions can strain the healthcare workforce (Haddad et al., 2021). The nursing profession has continued to be dominated by the female gender. Female nurses often leave the profession for a while for maternity and child rearing purpose; thus, contributing to shortage. Violence within the healthcare setting, especially physical or emotional abuse, also contributes to intention to leave the nursing profession eventually leading to nursing shortages (Haddad et al., 2021).