Reasons behind Nursing as Career Choice - Literature review Example

From this research it is clear that nurses often compose the biggest group of healthcare professionals all over the world. In the United Kingdom (UK), there are around 27 physicians for every 10,000 people, while there are 103 nurses and midwives for the same ratio. Nurses are also considered as versatile caregivers and the backbone of the national healthcare system. Recruiting general nurses, especially in the United States and Europe, however, has undergone considerable decline over the years.

Lai, Peng, and Chang and Preston noted that nursing recruitment and attrition are worldwide concerns, even for first world countries. They are concerned of the reasons that compel nurses to leave the nursing profession, such as lack of support from other healthcare staff and poor avenues for professional development. These nurses would have stayed in the profession if they received more support from mentors or coaches, as well as opportunities for professional development. A decreasing number of entrants to the profession of nursing have also been a core issue for many countries.

The increased rates of nursing student attrition have brought about multiple quality and quantity healthcare delivery issues. In 2002, Jennings reported attrition rates in pre-registration nurse education that ranged from 27 per cent to 40 per cent for the entire United Kingdom alone. Price reviewed the qualitative literature on nursing as a career choice and one of the reasons that students do not pursue nursing or stop pursuing nursing is because of the “paradox of caring”. These external and internal concerns are only some of the reasons that the nursing profession has experienced loss of nurses and decrease in nursing students.

Chapter One will explore recruitment, selection, and retention issues. It will provide the overview on the positive and negative images of nursing to target students. It will show that there is a research gap on studying the motivations of both nurses and potential nursing students in pursuing nursing as a long-term career option. It will also discuss the research goals of the researcher. 1:2 The Demand is Not Equal to the Supply Numerous nursing recruitment (Wells and McElwee, 2000), orientation (Price, 2009), retention (While and Blackman, 1998), socialisation (Price, 2009) and attrition issues (Rognstad, Aasland, and Granum, 2004) have affected the supply of nurses all over the world.

Demand for nurses and other healthcare professionals and workers, however, continue to rise, as life expectancy improves and people experiencing acute and chronic health conditions increase (van den Heuvel et al., 2009). One of the main causes of the discrepancy between nursing demand and supply is the human resource management (HRM) practices and strategies of healthcare institutions (Locke, Alavi, and Wagner, 1997). According to reports, there have been challenges in nurse recruitment and the filling up of nursing positions at hospitals.

For instance, in 2000, there was a shortage of an estimate of 110,700 registered nurses as reported by the Ministry of Health in the US (Sochalski, 2002). In addition, Buerhaus, Staiger, and Auerbach (2008) reported that the shortfall of registered nurses in the country is likely to