The American Nursing Association reports of registered nurses being the most sought after professionals in 2020, sentiments supported by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics as it is estimated the country needs 11 million nurses to cover the shortage (Toney-Butler, Annamaraju, & Haddad, 2020) . .This points to a rather obvious fact, shortage of nurses, especially at a time when the country is battling Coronavirus Disease-2019, arguably the most significant health pandemic in years. The shortage is occasioned by a myriad of factors and the possible solutions as discussed below.
Top on the list is the increase in the ageing population not just in the US but also in other developed economies such as Europe, Australia and Japan. It is projected by 2029; there will be a 73% increase in individuals over 65 years old which stood at 71 million in 2019. An elderly population translates to need for more healthcare services, of which a larger percentage need nursing services. Besides, several nurses who make up the limited workforce are themselves ageing and into their retirement years, something that will result in shortage when they retire.
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Nursing has been traditionally perceived as a female profession. Despite recent developments where more belonging to the male gender are undertaking nursing, the majority remains female. Female nurses also have to handle other roles, such as nurturing their children during their childbearing years. This creates shortages when they are given maternity leaves.
Perhaps the most worrying cause of shortage in nursing is a lack of educational bandwidth that is needed to train new nursing students. This is occasioned by many aspects such as lack of faculty members in different nursing institutions, lack of clinical resources and lack of funding. Lack of clinical resources, such as clinical sites denies would-be nurses the essential hand-on-experience needed. Limited funding means less pay for faculty members who have undergone stressful experiences to acquire the higher educational levels needed to be a trainer.
The best way to handle the shortage in nursing is through investment in nursing education. This includes increasing the overall capacity of faculties in universities and colleges that train nurses through increased funding to equip nursing resource and training needs, increased pay for faculty members and increased graduate training through scholarship and mentorship programs to provide more nursing educators. This should go hand in hand with increased intake of those willing to enrol into nursing unlike in the past where nursing training centers turned away 64,067 applicants who had all qualifications from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2016 because of an inadequate number of faculties, clinical sites, classroom spaces, and clinical preceptors, and also budget constraints (Mehdaova, 2017) .
Forming strategic partnerships with other government agencies or private sectors by nursing schools in different states. An example is a case of University of Minnesota collaboration with the Veteran Affairs where the university nursing school partnered with the Minnesota VA Health Care System in 2013 (AACN, 2019). With this, the institution realized increased students’ enrollment while the Veteran Affairs unit realized increased healthcare access something that resulted in the agency increasing funding to the nursing school to facilitate increased placement sites. This has contributed significantly to the training of new nurses.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2019). Nursing Shortage . Retrieved from www.aacnnursing.org: https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Shortage
Haddad, L., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. (2020). Nursing Shortage. StatPearls. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
Mehdaova, E. (2017). Strategies to Overcome the Nursing Shortage. Walden University. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5933&context=dissertations
