Nursing shortage - Research Paper Example

Nurses are needed in the care for individuals in hospitals as well as the general population of the world because of their unique ability not only to save the lives of their patients, but also for improving their outcomes. When one considers the current situation, it can be said that the public misunderstanding of exactly what nurses do has mainly caused the shortage. In most cases, the public holds take the duties that nurses perform for granted, giving more importance to doctors than to nurses.

This has given rise to the notion that the nursing profession is not important, therefore influencing the decision of many people who would have gone into the profession to choose other professions which are deemed to be more important. The shortage can be said to be caused by three main factors which include poor working conditions, limited funding available for research, and finally, the short staffing in hospitals. The nursing profession has been taken for granted for a long time and it is only recently that its importance has come to be recognized as a shortage has developed.

This shortage in the number of nurses in hospitals has created a situation where there is understaffing meaning that the available nurses have to work long hours (Mee and Robinson, 2003). These long hours has a tendency of taking a toll on the physical and mental wellbeing of the nurses involved and may lead to a reduction in their performance levels. This reduction in their performance means that the wellbeing of their patients is placed in jeopardy since some of them may require more attention from the nurses in order to make a quick recovery.

A nursing shortage, therefore, creates a situation where patients are not provided with the best healthcare available and this is mainly due to the low nurse to patient ratio that the shortage creates. If this shortage is not countered with efficient policies, then it will most likely end up costing the health systems of many countries dear. This is because of the fact that without nurses, there will be a low patient outcome since the patients will not be receiving the care they need to recover effectively.

Furthermore, as the aging population continues to increase and the demand for nurses also increases, there is the possibility that the mortality rate of the human population will be quite high in the coming years (“Critical care medicine”, 2002). The nursing shortage has dire implications on the future of the nursing profession and among these is the possibility that in future, there may be a shortage of teachers to teach the new generation of nurses. This is mainly because the number of experience nurses available to guide the younger generation of nurses into the profession will be extremely low.

This will create a situation where it will be impossible for nurses to work effectively most of their action will be done through trial and error, ensuring that the patient outcome remains low. The future of this profession is quite bleak because it has for a long time been associated to women, who in the modern times have a wide range of career option open to them. This means that the idea of nursing as the premier professional option for women is fast fading away. It is therefore prudent for healthcare policymakers to make the profession more attractive to the younger generation through improving the working conditions, providing enough