Discussion: Effects of Nursing Staff Shortages to the Health Care System

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Effects of Nursing Staff Shortages to the Health Care System

There has a been a rise in the number of nurse shortages in the health care systems. Most of this is due increase in nurse turnover especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The nurses are complaining of lack of job satisfaction and motivation (Haddad et al., 2022). They are overworking themselves as they try to take on more shifts. The patient-nurse ratio is not even making the nurses have burnout. The nurses are not also allowed to take leaves or off days so as to rest from stressful work environment. Most of the nurses are female and therefore have to take maternity leaves after pregnancy so as to take care of their kids and families (Holmberg et al., 2018). This has to clearly stop since has led to a number of negative effects. The leading effect is the increase in mortality late. Since not every patient can access a nurse easily, some are forced to be taken care by care givers who do not have the nursing knowledge and skills. The patient ends up dying. There has also been an increase of medical errors (Haddad et al., 2022). This is mostly due to overworking the available nurses. If the number of nurses is increased the medication errors will reduce.

There are a number of ways that can increase the number of nurse availability. The most common of them is increase in their wages and benefits. The government should work on ensuring that the nursing profession should be held with at most priority (Holmberg et al., 2018). They should put aside enough funds to cater for the salaries of the nurses, the nursing teachers and their benefits. The benefits should also include hardship allowances for the nurses who work in the rural under developed areas. Finance aids should also be set aside for nursing students so that they do not suffer in the midst of their studies due to finance problems (Haddad et al., 2022). This will encourage more people to join the nursing profession. Men should also be encouraged to take up the profession seeing that it was previously female dominated. This will be helpful when women have to take leaves to take care of their families. Male patients will also feel more comfortable when been taken care of by male nurses. Do you think the government is capable of setting aside more funds for the nursing profession? Do you think that the government setting aside funds for nursing fields will attract more people to the career? Will the stereotype of nursing being a females profession ever die?

References

Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2022). Nursing shortage. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing. HYPERLINK "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/

Holmberg, C., Caro, J., & Sobis, I. (2018). Job satisfaction among Swedish mental health nursing personnel: Revisiting the two‐factor theory. International journal of mental health nursing, 27(2), 581-592. HYPERLINK "https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher-Holmberg/publication/315839805_Job_satisfaction_among_Swedish_mental_health_nursing_personnel_Revisiting_the_two-factor_theory/links/59e245eb458515393d57efca/Job-satisfaction-among-Swedish-mental-health-nursing-personnel-Revisiting-the-two-factor-theory.pdf" https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher-Holmberg/publication/315839805_Job_satisfaction_among_Swedish_mental_health_nursing_personnel_Revisiting_the_two-factor_theory/links/59e245eb458515393d57efca/Job-satisfaction-among-Swedish-mental-health-nursing-personnel-Revisiting-the-two-factor-theory.pdf