The Shortage Of Nursing Professional

903 Words4 Pages
The shortage of nursing professional has been an ongoing crisis in many countries for the past decade. A number of countries, including the USA, have been working hard to increase the number of registered nurses in an attempt to rectify the situation and its possible impact on the health care system (CHAN, TAM, WONG, 2013). The two main places that are effected by the shortage significantly are the hospitals and long- term care facilities. Some causes due to staff shortage are stressful work environments, less staff to care for patients, longer wait times, more patients prone to falling. Some solution to these problems are hiring more temporary staff to fill vacancies, and improving the work environment. Being short staff is a very serious problem because it lead to a patient not being properly cared for. Also a patient hurting themselves because they are trying to do something on their own because they refuse to wait any longer for help. Some examples of short staff in a hospital setting is patients having to wait on trolleys in corridors, chronic bed shortage, children being treated on adult wards, too few staff caring for patients overnight(Campbell 2014). Lack of beds is leading to many patients who need medical care being treated on surgical wards where staff aren’t well trained. Some examples of short staff in a long-term care facilities are patient waiting to have their call bells answered. Low staffing levels leading to more elderly people falling which presents a
Get Access