The healthcare industry involves working under a significant amount of pressure due to the nature of the jobs involved. Healthcare organizations and individuals are concerned with the health and well-being of many people. As a result, they have to deal with high levels of pressure and stress. Sometimes, the stress may lead to poor performance by the staff involved. The role of the human resources includes ensuring that there is sufficient and well-trained staff to achieve the goals of the organization. One of the challenges healthcare human resource management faces is staff shortages. I was once an employee of a healthcare organization experiencing staff shortages, and it affected the productivity of the available workers.
I worked in a rural hospital with a 100-bed capacity and experienced the challenge of staff shortages. This was a community healthcare organization located in a rural area serving a fairly small population. The community members would seek various forms of care from the hospital because the services were affordable and easily accessible. The organization’s workforce was organized into departments, including the human resource department responsible for the management of the other employees. Due to its small size, the hospital did not have enough nurses ( Brandis et al., 2016) . The human resource had to plan on how to work with the available employees. The available nurses worked for long shifts and with minimal rest.
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The Challenge
Recruiting is one of the most pressing issues in human healthcare resources. According to the estimation by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 203,700 registered nurses are needed each year. Many nurses are retiring, while more positions are also being created. By 2022, there will be about 1.2 million new nursing positions to be filled ( Bamonti et al., 2019) . This means that colleges need to train more nurses to supply to the industry. Many institutions are already feeling the effects of the shortages and are, in turn, offering reduced quality healthcare.
Diseases are evolving while others are also being discovered. Healthcare problems are increasing day-by-day meaning that there is an equivalent need for more healthcare workers to meet the growing demands. Some diseases have evolved in such a way that there is a need for increased knowledge through research and more direct care nurses to implement the research findings through evidence-based practice. Organizations need to have research facilities and evidence-based programs to assist in incorporating new healthcare guidelines and procedures to be able to handle the current healthcare problems. This also needs further recruitment of healthcare workers.
The nature and demands of the current workforce are another contributing to the shortages in healthcare staff. The current workforce has increasing number of millennials with different priorities from their predecessors. Previously, workers were interested in the competitive workforce based on the description of their work and performance. The millennial workforce, on the other hand, is focusing on the benefits and advancement opportunities offered by a job. Therefore, healthcare organizations must change their job descriptions to match the new demands and appeal to young potential employees ( Kilroy, Flood, Bosak, & Chênevert, 2017) . Many institutions are now offering opportunities and benefits such as training, development, tuition reimbursement, and monetary and non-monetary benefit packages.
Impact of the Problem
Staff shortage at the healthcare organization was caused by its small size and lack of funds to hire more employees. The hospital needed cheap labor, which was not available due to the new demands of the current workforce. The shortage had many negative impacts, including reduced quality of patient care, lack of employee satisfaction, low retention rates, and increased chances of burnout and compassion fatigue ( Bamonti et al., 2019) . The organization’s leadership was aware of the challenge and was working to improve the situation.
The primary goal of every healthcare worker is to provide high-quality care to the satisfaction of the patient and the care provider. To achieve the goal, various factors must come into play. For example, there must be a good working environment, fair nurse to patient ratio, and enough resources ( Hoseini & Negarandeh, 2017) . In case of shortages, one nurse has to care for more patients than the standard number. A nurse should be able to spend ample time with the patients to understand their problems, to develop a working care plan, and to monitor the patient progress. With much workload, the nurse cannot get time to carry out all these functions.
Staff shortages also affect job satisfaction. Nurses need to be comfortable and in the right state of mind to deliver. The required satisfaction is brought about by good working conditions and fair job compensation. Those who work in understaffed facilities have more duties that do not match their compensations. Such employees do not give their best in their jobs. In most cases, they keep looking for better opportunities elsewhere. Such organizations continuously lose their best employees to rivals. With a poor retention rate, organization performance can hardly improve. Dissatisfaction also reduces the compassion of nurses as they opt to provide a bare minimum of what the job requires ( Cooke & Bartram, 2015) .
Staff shortage is one of the causes of compassion fatigue and burnout among nurses. The nurses work in long shifts with minimal or no resting periods. Caring for other people can be stressful, especially in critical care units. Having to deal with suffering individuals on a daily basis can cause secondary traumatic stress ( Hoseini & Negarandeh, 2017) . In organizations with good staffing, nurses get good rests and are always in the right physical and mental status to work. In the community hospital, we would work for up to five days a week, and in the end, one felt tired and worn-out.
Solutions
The human resources needed to find solutions that consider the need to improve patient care and solve the crisis within the organization’s means. Some of the possible solutions include seeking help from the local and federal governments, getting more volunteers, and reducing bed capacity. By having more volunteers, the hospital could help to improve patient to nurse ratio. However, candidates prefer to volunteer in places where there are high chances of being offered a job ( Miller, Lianekhammy, Pope, Lee, & Owens, 2017) . This means that the organization’s management needed to work towards improving its financial position by looking for investors and grants. Local, State, and Federal governments have a responsibility to ensure that citizens access affordable health care ( Brandis et al., 2016) . This hospital is in a prime position, which makes it a source of primary care for many residents. The governments should help in making it a better place.
The hospital needed to reduce its workload by decreasing its bed capacity. As it was, the facility was not able to recruit nurses that meet the patient demands ( Cooke & Bartram, 2015) . The nurses could perform better if they had to work with fewer admitted patients. However, this is not one of the best solutions because it would limit the community’s access to health care. Due to the presenting situation, it was a potential short-term solution.
Conclusion
The community healthcare organization was small in size but a source of help to several residents. Its small size presented with challenges such as the inability to employ enough healthcare workers. The shortage led to poor care outcomes, lack of satisfaction by both the care providers and patients, and risks of burnout and compassion fatigue. Because of its importance to the community, the facility needed to provide both short-term and long-term solutions. One of the best remedies is to look for volunteers to fill the shortages and grants from various stakeholders.
References
Bamonti, P., Conti, E., Cavanagh, C., Gerolimatos, L., Gregg, J., Goulet, C., ... & Edelstein, B. (2019). Coping, cognitive emotion regulation, and burnout in long-term care nursing staff: A preliminary study. Journal of Applied Gerontology , 38 (1), 92-111.
Brandis, S., Fitzgerald, A., Avery, M., McPhail, R., Fisher, R., & Booth, J. (2016). 12. The emergence of new kinds of professional work within the health sector. Perspectives on contemporary professional work: Challenges and experiences , 232.
Cooke, F. L., & Bartram, T. (2015). Guest editors’ introduction: human resource management in health care and elderly care: current challenges and toward a research agenda. Human Resource Management , 54 (5), 711-735.
Hoseini-Esfidarjani, S. S., & Negarandeh, R. (2017). A new view towards resolving the nursing shortage challenge. Journal of hayat , 23 (3), 196-200.
Kilroy, S., Flood, P. C., Bosak, J., & Chênevert, D. (2017). Perceptions of high‐involvement work practices, person‐organization fit, and burnout: A time‐lagged study of health care employees. Human Resource Management , 56 (5), 821-835.
Miller, J. J., Lianekhammy, J., Pope, N., Lee, J., & Grise-Owens, E. (2017). Self-care among healthcare social workers: An exploratory study. Social Work in Health Care , 56 (10), 865-883.
