Nursing Shortage Effect on the Healthcare Industry - Assignment Example

Nursing shortage Nursing shortage It is imperative to posit that one of the major challenges that face the health care industry in the contemporary world include nursing shortage. This paper elucidates how nursing shortage affects individual nurses, the profession of nursing and health care delivery. Nursing shortage impacts negatively on job performance. Adequate number of nurses are required by many health care institutions especially during emergencies to handle high numbers of patients requiring immediate care.

Subsequently, people in the modern world are faced with a lot of medical challenges as a result of factors such as poor lifestyle and poor nutrition hence the need for adequate nursing levels. Due to the shortage, nurses have to extend their working hours under hectic, demanding, and traumatic situations. This elevates their chances of experiencing fatigue, are more likely to be harmed as a result of loss of concentration caused by tiredness, and are also likely to appear more de-motivated in their work.

Long working hours also increasing the chance of medical errors (Maville and Huerta, 2012). According to Maville and Huerta (2012), "Lack of necessary manpower to provide this care will result to work-related stress; poor health practices such as skipping meals, overeating, or excessive drinking off alcohol; working long hours; and possibly physical and mental exhaustion or profession dropout" (p. 441). It is also worth noting that the quality of health care as well as delivery is affected by nursing shortages.

Less motivated nurses as a result of being overworked are more likely to deliver low quality services. Delivery of services is affected as patients have to wait for long hours queuing in health institutions as a result of inadequate nurse to patient ratio (Maville and Huerta, 2012). In conclusion, inadequate number of nurses attending to the high number of patients in many health institutions can have health consequences on the part of nurse due to long working hours, low levels of concentration on their work, low levels of motivation, and also patient spend a lot of time queuing.

ReferenceMaville, J., & Huerta, C. (2012). Health Promotion in Nursing. Clifton Park, NY: Cengage Learning.