HEALTH SCIENCES AND MEDICINE - Coursework Example

Shortage of Nurses’ in Healthcare Facilities of Affiliation: Shortage of Nurses’ in Healthcare Facilities Introduction For a substantive period of time, the nursing profession has been experiencing an acute shortage of professionals in the industry with clinical nurses taking the greatest percentage. Evidently, the problem has been attributed to the difficulty faced during the recruitment processes of the professions and lack of appropriate mechanisms of retaining the current staff members.

Considering that nurses are the largest group of healthcare professionals with direct link to patients in terms of provision of healthcare services, any shortage affecting the group indeed has severe consequences towards the quality of service delivery. Problem Identification With shortage of nurses in the healthcare sector, it is evident that the safety and quality of healthcare is indeed compromised. Ideally, the shortage would overwhelm the already existing nurses, an aspect that causes distress and dissatisfaction among such nursing professions.

Additionally, there is also the possibility of frustration among the professions, which contributes significantly to burnout on the job and the other different roles played by such individuals. The increased shortage really undermines the patient treatment outcomes considering the poor service delivery aspect (AACN, 2009). Potential Causes of Nurses’ Shortage A number of causes can be attributed to the shortage of clinical nurse in healthcare centers and mostly in Hallways hospital. First, it is critical to state that shortage of clinical nurses in healthcare facilities is a problem that affects the entire globe, and, therefore, not limited to a particular region (Lavoie-Tremblay et. al., 2008).

This ideally means that provision of healthcare services is an element of the healthcare system that is currently under threat. Insufficient supply of nurses to hospitals is indeed a stressor for a number of institutions Hallways hospital included. Despite the difficulty in estimating the exact effect attributed to such occurrences, the reasons for the cause are very obvious. Out of the numerous causes of shortage of clinical nurses in Hallways hospital, four are identified as the potential causes.

These include the increased demand of nurses in the healthcare sector. In most instances, the number of individuals registering for nursing causes in the different colleges due to the fact that poor working conditions has been identified as the possible cause. Such an aspect can well be stated as demographic changes in the nursing workforce that decreased the supply of working clinical nurses (AACN, 2009). Another significant contributor towards the increased shortage of nurses in Hallways Hospital is the little growth in nurses’ wages.

In most instances, clinical nurses have been seen to constantly protest in demand for the increase in their wages. Such a perspective has been attributed to the fact that despite their work in the work they perform, the returns the get in return for their service in not equivalent in their wages, making a majority of people go for other professions portrayed as better paying (Lavoie-Tremblay et. al., 2008). A stressful hospital workplace environment, also contributes significantly towards the decreased number of clinical nurses in the healthcare sector.

The poor working environment comprised of much work with little pay for the nurses is ideally a great contributor towards the reduced number of individuals in the sector. ReferencesAmerican Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2009, September, 28). "Nursing Shortage Fact Sheet" (9-09.DOC). USA: AACN. Lavoie-Tremblay, M., Obrien-Pallas, L., Gélinas, C., Desforges, N., and Marchionni, C. (2008). "Addressing the Turnover Issue Among New Nurses from a Generational Viewpoint." Journal of Nursing Management, 16(6), 724–733.