Effective Approaches on Nursing Shortage and Nurse Turn-Over - Essay Example

Effective Approaches on Nursing Shortage and Nurse Turn-Over Effective approaches on Nursing Shortage and Nurse Turnover Nursing shortages involves having inadequate personnel. If a hospital has the challenges of employing new qualified personnel after the retirement of some nurses or job quitting, may bring a shortage of nurses in such a hospital if the turn-out of the patients is very high. The employments of the nurses in many hospitals depend with the average admission of patients in a period in which additional of other nurses can be done in the case when large numbers of patients are admitted. It is the role of nursing managers and leaders to discover when nursing shortages might occur and find solutions. The nurse turnover is based on nurses quitting the job due to various reasons as will be discussed. Losing experienced nurses from a hospital brings confusion among nurse leaders on how to recruit newly qualified nurses. The paper will discuss different approaches of the nurse leaders in addressing issues concerning nursing shortage and nursing turnover and the solutions. On one hand, a nursing shortage is caused by three main factors including hospital acuity, baby boom bubble, and declining enrollments. Acuity in various hospitals is increasing rapidly due to the new technology that permits assessing, treating and discharging patients to be very fast. A decline in the period of patient staying in the hospital also causes acuity in various hospitals. Many hospitals are increasingly buying machines and apparatus and situate them in intensive care units that can monitor cardiac, assist in patient’s respiratory system and offers intensive treatment to patients in critical conditions (Feldman, 2003). Therefore, the demand of getting nurses with knowledge and skills of operating those machines while treating patients is very high. The situation is challenging towards nurse leaders while finding, hiring or employing such nurses who can bring nursing shortages they are inadequate. The second cause is declining in enrollments. Many hospitals are seeking for nurses who are students who have a minimum qualification of a baccalaureate degree. However, the enrollment in the degree is declining at a high rate since not many students get registered for nursing-related programs (Feldman, 2003). It is the role of the leaders to find means of creating awareness towards high school students on the importance of enrolling nursing-related courses in future after completing and passing the final exam. Many students may choose nursing as their future career where offering scholarships to some could be an added advantage. Offering internships and attachments to nursing students may create a good image about the hospitals where some may wish to be employed after enrollments. The strategies can reduce the cost of hiring qualified nurses and rely on own-employed nurses. Retirement of the nurses also brings nursing shortages in hospitals. Retiring of nurses means losing experienced nurses, and a void is left. It is the responsibility of the nurse leaders to discover earlier, the number of retiring nurses and notify the government for recruitment of new nurses when that time reaches if it is a public hospital (Feldman, 2003). Private hospitals should be in a position of training new nurses in advance in order to gain experience before the retirements of some nurses occur. Shortages of secretaries, supporting staff, and other health professionals can also lead to nursing shortage when nurses are repositioned to fill the gap in those positions. Admitted patients are mostly affected if the responsible nurses are repositioned to go and work in other positions within the hospital. On the other hand, nurse turnover mainly involves nurses quitting from the job. There are various factors that cause the nurse turn-over where some will be discussed. Nurse turnovers mainly contribute to the shortage nurses, therefore, leading to the nursing shortage (Westphal, 2008). Most of the nurses quit from nursing due to low payments. A nurse may decide to quit from the job if the income salary does not meet his or her all expenditures. In the modern world, there are competitions in all corporations including hospitals. Therefore, a nurse may be seeking for a suitable place or position of work while still working in the entire hospital and if the succession of getting prevails he or she quits. Poor management of nurses by nurse leaders may also cause nurse turnover, particularly when nurse leaders fail to recognize the work of the nurses by rewarding them. Poor communications with the nurse leaders, working overtime without payments and poor performance may cause nurse turnovers. Therefore, it is the role of the nurse leaders to put good strategies that will have the capability of maintaining the entire workers in the workplace (Rigolosi, 2013). There are various ways that the nurse leaders or managers should do in order to reduce or minimize the rate of nursing turnovers. There are four categories of successfully reducing the financial effect of nursing turnover including making nursing work to be more attractive to qualified nursing students, raising the figure of qualified nursing students, improving the management of the hired nurses and classifying the candidates according to job fits (Westphal, 2008). The aim of increasing the figure of nursing students can be done by creating awareness of the nursing profession to the community through enhancement of educational programs. Nursing leaders should also sponsor nursing students by giving scholarships and provide educational reimbursement to the existing nurse workers so that they can obtain nursing degrees. Recruitment of nurses’ scholars from abroad and insisting the government on the importance of creating many nursing schools can also increase the number of nursing scholars. Increasing nurses’ benefits and compensations, supporting job sharing, developing nursing career activities, and improving the employment brand of a nursing organization can make the nursing jobs more gorgeous to nursing scholars (Westphal, 2008). The methods that can be used by nurse leaders to screen out nursing scholars according to job-fit includes; informing the scholars about the real affordable jobs and fairly assessing and evaluating job motivations and interests of the nursing candidates. There are improved several ways of managing hired nurses should be performed by the nurse leaders. The nurse leaders should communicate the objectives of work by clearly stating expectations and performance of the working, reward and recognize superior performance, support nurse career development, build coworker and teamwork support and assist nurses in coping with nursing stress. In addition, the nurse leaders should optimize the methods of setting the job schedules, address deficit issues may affect others on the nursing teamwork and minimize other work is not involving patient care activities (Rigolosi, 2013). The points about the nursing shortages and nurse turnover have similarities and differences. Both nursing shortage and nurse turnovers bring bad impacts towards a nursing organization. The approaches towards both nursing shortage and nurse turnovers are similar such creating awareness to the nursing students about the career will bring a future benefit where there will be many qualified nursing candidates to be employed. Retirement of nurses is a cause of turnover but also brings a nursing shortage. However, there are many differences between the nursing shortage and nurse turnovers as earlier discussed. For example, some causes of the both nursing shortage and nurse turnover have a greater difference from each other and how they can be approached by the nurse leaders and managers to bring a solution. In conclusion, nurse turnovers brings the costs of hiring, orienting and training new recruited nurse personnel, terminating, advertising posts on vacant and recruiting new nurse among other that retard the growth and development of the nursing organizations such as hospitals. However, there some benefits after the nurse turnovers. One of the benefits is that the salaries of the hired nurses can be smaller than that of departed nurses adding an advantage to the organization. Savings from bonuses of departed nurses is not paid to them. The organization can be able to eliminate the poor performers and replacement of existing nurses brings innovations, creativity and new ideas towards the nursing organization. References Feldman, H. R. (2003). The nursing shortage: Strategies for recruitment and retention in clinical practice and education. New York: Springer Pub. Rigolosi, E. L. M. (2013). Management and leadership in nursing and health care: An experiential approach. New York: Springer. Westphal, J. A. (2008). The effect of workforce shortages on nurse leader turnover and succession in United States hospitals. Read More