The nursing shortage currently the USA is experiencing has a variety of adverse effects on healthcare affecting patients, systems and the nurses themselves. The first major impact is on patient care from a holistic perspective. Modern care-based nursing involves an interpersonal relationship between a nurse and a patient (Nantsupawat et al., 2016). Nurse shortage ensure that each nurse has to handle a higher number of patients, hence spend less time and pay less attention to each patient. The limited time and attention affect the level of care given and the nature of interpersonal relationship developed (Pazargadi et al., 2015). The second impact is on teamwork-based hospital systems. The systems and teams in most hospital departments require a number of nurses to function effectively. Nurse shortage affects both team formation and team efficiency, hence limiting the efficacy of other nursing professionals. Finally, places more per capita pressure on each nurse, which increases the propensity for exhaustion, burnout, and fatigue. According to available research, exhaustion, burnout, and fatigue increase propensity for errors, which in turn affect patient care. The quality of life for nurses is also adversely affected (Zboril-Benson et al., 2016).
Whereas it is important to develop ways to improve the quality of care in spite of the nurse shortage, it is worthy of notice that eliminating the nurse shortage itself is the only substantive solution to the problem. Making the profession more attractive as a career choice, easing the certification process and improving working conditions are thus requisite long-term solutions. In the interim, limiting the non-care associated duties for nurses can be a plausible solution in improving quality of care. Allowing support staff to handle issues such as patent hygiene and the keeping of electronic records can allow nurses to focus more time on patient care (Pazargadi et al., 2015). The second plausible approach is to increase the number of hours that nurses work per week coupled with proper remuneration for the same. Nurses work approximately 40-hours a week, yet Residents and some doctor’s work for up to 80 hours (Townsend & Anderson, 2017; Park, 2017). Instead of an overloaded 40-hour week, nurses can be allowed to work a more relaxed 50-to-60 hour week. This change would reduce the pressure that nurses work under while contemporaneously increasing their wages.
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References
Nantsupawat, A., Nantsupawat, R., Kunaviktikul, W., Turale, S., & Poghosyan, L. (2016). Nurse burnout, nurse‐reported quality of care, and patient outcomes in Thai hospitals. Journal of Nursing Scholarship , 48 (1), 83-90.
Park, R. (2017, March 16). Why So Many Young Doctors Work Such Awful Hours. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/doctors-long-hours-schedules/516639/
Pazargadi, M., Fereidooni Moghadam, M., Fallahi Khoshknab, M., Alijani Renani, H., & Molazem, Z. (2015). The therapeutic relationship in the shadow: Nurses’ experiences of barriers to the nurse–patient relationship in the psychiatric ward. Issues in mental health nursing , 36 (7), 551-557.
Townsend, T., & Anderson, P. (2017, November 08). Are extended work hours worth the risk? Retrieved from https://www.americannursetoday.com/are-extended-work-hours-worth-the-risk/
Zboril-Benson, L. R. (2016). Why nurses are calling in sick: the impact of health-care restructuring. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research Archive , 33 (4).2
