The American Healthcare System Is Severely Impacted By The Shortage Of Nursing Personnel Essay

A scholarly search was conducted to select the most relevant articles related to nursing shortages. The search was initiated through the use of electronic databases CINAHL and MEDLINE, and professional organizations websites. Keywords for the search included: nursing shortage, impact, hospitals, prevention, patient outcomes, nursing faculty shortage, and the United States. The original search produced 606 articles. The search was further narrowed by selecting only academic journals or research articles with full text available for the years 2008 through 2015. Sixteen journal articles were reviewed. Five of these articles were selected for involvement in the review of literature section of this paper based on the types of research design. Below is a summary of the sources used.

Nurses make up the majority of health care staffing with over 4 million active registered nurses in the United States. Nurses are responsible for quality patient care and constantly monitoring and assessing their patients and are often providing the majority of patient care. With such a large impact on patients and their care, it is alarming to know there is shortage of nurses both state and nationwide. The demand for nurses is high but the supply is low. This is currently one of our nation’s largest health care issues. If it is not addressed, it will not only affect our current health care system but also the economic health of our nation’s future. There are several key factors that contribute to the nursing shortage; an increase in nurses who are retiring from the work field, there is a decrease in nursing educational resources and opportunities leading in to a lower number of new graduated nurses and a high level of staff turnover. An increase in nursing shortages results in decreased quality patient care and increased risk to patients.

health care professionals in the United States.Current and projected nursing shortages reflect the fact that fewer people are entering the profession.Shortages are difficult to estimate and project.In the past,shortages have tended to be resolved as wages rose in response to increased need for RNs.In addition, there is a cyclical aspect to shortages,as RNs are more likely to work when the economy is doing less well.1 Projected shortages differ from past circumstances in that,by 2020,a decline in the number of available nurses will coincide with an increased need for nursing services due to aging of the baby boom generation.These changes suggest that it will be more difficult,and more costly,to respond to the future

The causes for nursing shortage are many, such as; poor work conditions, inadequate resources to do nursing research and to improve nursing education, and the aging nursing workforce is one of the causes (Snow, 2009). Moreover, the high complexity of health care and health technology is increasing which makes the nursing profession seems more hard and complicated for many college students to major in.

Within the 1990’s hospitals were resourced to reduce registered nurses due to containing spending cost. Once the decrease of nurses occurred hospitals began to realize a demand of nurses had increased. Hospitals were soon faced with increased opening rates for nursing that emphasized a nursing shortage. It has been projected that there could be a nursing shortage that reaches more than 450,000 by the year of 2020. According to the American Nurses Association, the nursing shortage projection will grow to at least one million registered nurses by 2020 that is not destructively dealt with. Thirty-six percent of the surrounding areas, who are struggling to keep the pace with the demand for nurses at all levels of education and practice. With the persist of nursing shortages could be because of experienced nurses retiring.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employment Projections 2010-2020 published in February 2012 indicated that registered nurses are the top occupation with respect to job growth through 2020 (Nursing shortage, 2012). These projections also indicated that the number of active nurses will increase from 2.74 million in 2010 to 3.45 million in 2020, representing a 26% increase of 712,000 nurses; however, these projections also highlight the fact that there will be another 500,000 replacements needed during this period, meaning that demand for registered nurses will continue to outpace supply through the year 2020 (Nursing shortage, 2012). The results of a series of surveys conducted by the American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems show that more than half (60%) of all tertiary healthcare facilities in the United States have experiencing increasing registered nurse vacancy rates since 1999 (Velez & Strom, 2012).

The nursing shortage negatively impacts the quality of care for patients due to the high patient-to-nurse ratios; causing more burnout, more infections/diseases, higher re-admission rates, job dissatisfaction and higher risks for medication and safety errors. Minimum staffing regulations, ongoing, long-term workforce planning, implementation strategies for retaining nurses, technological advancements to increase the nursing workforce, and advocacy for increasing the nursing education funding are all measures that can be taken to help resolve the nursing shortage crisis.

I believe the greatest challenge facing the field of nursing today is nursing shortage in the hospitals that leads to increased nursing workload. Nurse deficit threatens the safety of patients and the nation’s health as a whole. One of the first articles concerning nursing shortage was published in 1965 by Superintendent of Chicago Wesley Memorial Hospital Kenath Hartman. One of the latest articles that just was published in May 2015 by Alexandra Robbins “We need more nurses” describes the absence of a larger nursing workforce. What causes the nursing shortage in the United States to be so consistent problem in health care for half a century? Meanwhile, there studies, researchers, and projects performed to analyze and estimate the figures of the

The strength of this study stems from it reliance on reports from foundations and government agencies with verifiable data. Nursing shortage data in this study puts the 2000 figure at 110,000 open registered nursing positions, which is a 6 percent shortage of supply. By 2008, this report indicted that hospital and long-term facilities were reporting a shortage of 8.1 percent. Estimates put the shortage of registered nurses at 260,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs), a figure that is double any nursing shortages since the 1960s.

In the last several years, the total number of nurses working in the field of health care has been continually declining. This is because more people have become frustrated with the challenges that they are facing from an increasing number of patients and more responsibilities. Moreover, the passage of the Affordable Care Act will place even more individuals into the system. This is problematic, as there is expected to be a shortage of 1 million RNs by 2020. (Reilly, 2011)

There is a lack of medical professionals being adequately trained to handle the increased demand for complex health care in America (Stock, McDermott, & McDermott, 2014). Many hospitals experience nursing shortfalls due to this shortage. However, this decrease is in part due to the number of qualified nurses that leave the field due to burnout. A high number of nurses feel safe to leave the nursing field now that the economy is recovering (AMN Healthcare, 2013). In 2013, over 30 percent of emergency department Registered Nurses (RNs) surveyed indicated that they plan to leave the field in the next year (AMN Healthcare, 2013).

A healthcare organization that is adequately staffed is able to provide the highest quality of care possible. Addressing the nursing shortage involves including many different stakeholders. A few topics that need to be considered when looking at the nursing shortage are the rational for a certain number of staff, an assessment of clinical specialties, assessment of clinical need and geographical need, timeline to achieve goals, and facilitators and barriers to proper nurse staffing. For this scenario, Illinois will be looked at because they are 10% below average on the nurse population ratio. The purpose of this paper is to examine and best determine the proper means of addressing the nursing shortage issues so that healthcare organizations in Illinois will be able to meet the 99th percentile of quality outcomes.

As many people in the United States are increasingly desperate for an employment opportunity, the nursing field or profession continues to have a huge need for staff. According to studies by employment services, the nursing profession is regularly ranked as one of the hot hiring sectors of the coming decade. Nonetheless, the supply of staff in this field seems not to catch up with the demand for nurses despite of the increased rate of unemployment. The need for more nurses in this field in the future originates from the aging baby boomer population and the increase in the number of aging nurses who are expected to retire. While the recent economic downturn has eased the nursing shortage momentarily, it's expected that the shortage of nurses will continue in the coming years.

A recent study has shown that the nursing shortage trend might continue over the next two decades. This shortage also reflects key changes in population demographics, career expectations, work attitudes, and worker dissatisfaction. Whereas the growth in nurses as part of the workforce has been slow, there has been a subsequent increase in the demand of RN’s. This fundamental imbalance points out a key factor i.e. the unwillingness of young adults to join the workforce as nurses. Today 's difficulties are further complicated by other changes in hospital care, such as new medical technologies, lack of training and education, the ACAs’ Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) and a declining average length of stay, that have led to

Nursing shortage is a scary idea for everyone, but it has been a well-known problem to America for the past couple of years. The shortage has resulted from a number of factors but the main one is