A better understanding in the nursing shortage and efforts to resolve the crisis!

The supply of registered nurses (RNs) in the United States was estimated in 2000 at 1.89 million while the demand was estimated at 2 million. Thus, there had been a six percent shortage in RNs, which represent the largest healthcare in the nation, or about 110,000.

But hospitals in the U.S. had had to deal with the recurring shortages of nurses since World War II. The War Labor Board then froze wages and workers were in short supply although Otto von Bismarck introduced a concept in Germany more than a century ago to encourage the entry of people into the healthcare profession. Modern industrial nations, except the world’s richest, had come to this conclusion.

The Bismarck proposal is that health problems beyond an individual’s control should be insured by the community’s pooling of resources so that a part of government financial resources spent to health care will augment the salaries medical professionals.

Moreover, the nursing shortage is projected to be 808,400 by 2020, or 29 percent. The shortage is not being experienced only in hospitals, but also in nursing homes, which project to need 66 percent more RNs in 2020 based on 1991 data.

Attempts had been made in the 2002 national reports to quantify the nursing shortage and explain the threat the crisis poses to health care delivery. The report of the Health Resources and Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates that the shortage of RNs is projected to grow from 30 states in 2000 to 44 states in 2020.

The current crisis is, as researches point out, is the product of several developments. Aside from an aging population that will entail intense health care services, the diminishing number of new students to nursing to replace the present aging workforce has been compounding the problem. Actually, thousands of qualified men and women who want to enter the field are being turned away by the nation’s schools of nursing due also to scarcity in nursing faculty. The average age of professional nurses is in the forties and they are not being replaced by the new generation.

A decline in RN earnings relative to other career options, and low job satisfaction and poor working conditions that contribute to high workforce attrition rates are also primary factors to the crisis. This has been leading to “burnouts” in hospitals, leading nurses to retire.

In the 1980s, a serious shortage of nurses across the country prompted the development of the travel nursing industry, a short-term solution to meet the nurse staffing needs, particularly in states as Arizona and California where seasonal turnover of population is high due to tourism. Whether or not they choose to travel, nurses today are responsible many aspects of patient’s care, including assisting in diagnosis, creating care plans and educating patients about procedures.

There are more than 200 specialty areas for RNs in the U.S. wherein duties and responsibilities vary within each specialty but all guided by local, state and federal laws as well as ethical codes. The explosion of new and improved medical technology will surely provide even more opportunities for nurses. According to the occupational outlook handbook of the Department of Labor, employment of RNs is expected a growth of 27 percent or more by 2014.

As to the prevailing nursing crisis, experts say that the short-term solutions made to address past nursing shortages will have little impact. The typical solutions included increase in salaries and recruitment of nurses from other countries, aside from encouraging the entry of students into the nursing schools, both online and offline.

Due to the reported “burnouts,” some states have made efforts to ensure safer working conditions for nurses by passing legislation concerning minimum staffing ratios and prohibiting mandatory overtime practices. Aside from California, about 20 other states introduced similar statute.

The Nurse Reinvestment Act of 2002 is the federal response to the shortage, which encourages recruitment and retention strategies in addition to loan repayment programs and scholarships for nursing students. Various supports from professional nursing associations prompted the passage in Congress on 18 February, 2003 of the $397.4 billion FY 2003 Omnibus Appropriations bill. It further led to the enactment of the Nurse Reinvestment Act (PL 107-205) and appropriation of funds covering the Act.

Although professional organizations and health care institutions succeeded in alerting policy makers to the problems associated to the shortage in the skilled nursing workforce, the level of public and private financial resources needs to be expanded the reverse prevailing trends.

GMAT Software