Workforce Instability Due At The Nursing Field

Those of us who graduated from nursing school and started their first job were full of dreams, aspirations, and had every intention of making a difference. Now fast forward five years; these same nurses have been on their feet for 16 hours and have not had time to eat or use the bathroom since leaving their homes this morning. The call lights will not stop going off long enough for them to give report to the oncoming nurses and once again they are late for their children’s dance recitals or soccer games. They can forget about trying to squeeze a yoga class in this week. I understand what it is like to rush to your car feeling as if some important task was forgotten; was Mr. Smith’s tube feed restarted, did room 8 receive their pain medication? Nurses all over the world are experiencing “burnout”. To avoid burnout, nurses must properly care for themselves by separating work from personal life, knowing when to say no, and making time for enjoyable activities to manage stress, because we cannot provide quality patient care if we are neglecting ourselves.

Nurses work long hours and deal with high levels of stress during the workday which leads to nurse burnout. Nurse burnout is classified as physical and mental fatigue, which strongly affects the nurses emotions and motivation. (“Nursing Burnout”). Burnout is caused by various factors within the workplace, such as dealing with a hectic, fast-paced environment, caring for too many patients at one time, and working odd hours. When nurses deal with multiple patients per shift, high levels of responsibility, and their own personal problems, they can become exhausted and overwhelmed. Stress due to burnout can also affect the nurse’s mood in a negative way, causing the nurse to become impatient or irritable, which can oftentimes results in verbal or emotional abuse towards the

One of the most serious issues in nursing, that can affect a nurses career is nursing burn- out. According to the article “Where have all the nurses gone”, current nurses that are practicing, report high rates of job dissatisfaction (which is part of burn out) and 1 of 5 nurses may quit nursing in the next 5 years (Dworkin, 2002). Burnout is associated with nurses not coming in to work, not feeling satisfied when doing their job, high turnover rates and a lack of commitment to the work (Katisfaraki, 2013). If a nurse becomes burned- out, they may not take care of their patients as well and could make mistakes with medication administration. A study performed in the United States by Dr. Jeannie Cimiottti, shows that hospitals with

The shortage of nurses has gradually increased throughout the years. This shortage has taken a toll on patients, prospective nursing students, and faculty members. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, “In 2012, United States nursing schools turned away 79,659 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs” (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2014, para. 5). Unfortunately, even though there is a high number of students wanting to enter the nursing field there are not enough instructors to educate and train the students properly due to the low pay incentive for nursing professors. According to Brown (2015), “Clinical settings offer higher salaries than

Nursing burnout is serious and in order to ensure that nurses are taken care of, the administration must implement incentives and policies that will provide nurses with the resources to maintain a healthy work life balance. Burnout accounts for many of the medication errors and patient injuries in healthcare facilities. Most nurses are overwhelmed because of the caseload and longer workdays necessary to complete charting. Many nurses are also disgruntled because of denied vacation requests that cannot be approved because of non-coverage. Research has shown that when employees are happy then there are less errors and injuries in

With our nation focusing more on health care and the overall wellness of its people, the demand for it has been rising. According to Dr. Paul Takiguchi, a dermatologist at Pali Momi “- the biggest issue is the shortage of physicians which includes dermatologists, thus limiting patients’ timely access to care.” Though it may not seem like a big deal, the effects of it are starting to appear today and will only become more prevalent in the near future. In order to stop the doctor shortage in the field of medicine, the government must make changes to the education and training of doctors.

Is the nursing shortage in the United States real? The answer to that question is not as simple as it may seem. The nursing shortage greatly depends on the constant changes in healthcare coverage, for example Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements but it is also based on the rising number of the aging population. Although many sources predict that the nursing shortage is expected to get worse overall throughout the United States. There many other sources that we must consider when debating whether or not there is a big deficit. There are over 3 million nurses in America and they make up the largest segment of the health-care workforce in the U.S. (Grant, 2016). Nursing is one of the largest number of healthcare professionals in the United

The nursing shortage is an issue that affects the quality of care that is given to a patient. We always hear about job dissatisfaction or nursing schools not accepting students be a factor of the nursing shortage, but there is a bigger factor and that is the baby boomer nurses who are on the verge of retirement. These baby boomer nurses will retire in the next couple of years and this will leave a big gap in the nursing workforce. This will cause the next big nursing shortage. According to the American Association of College of Nursing (AACN) in 2013, 55% of the registered nurses (RNs) are age 50 or older. The Health Resource and Services Administration expects for more than 1 million RNs to reach retirement age within the next 10 to 15 years (AACN, 2014b). Nursing is a graying population, meaning that the workforce is retiring at a rate faster than it can be replaced. Organizations need to find solutions that would limit the impact of the baby boomers retiring.

Additionally, the study found that a high patient to nurse ratio resulted in greater emotional exhaustion and greater job dissatisfaction amongst nurses. Each additional patient per nurse was associated with a 23% increase in the likelihood of nurse burnout, and a 15% increase in the likelihood of job dissatisfaction. Moreover, 40% of hospital nurses have burnout levels exceeding the normal level for healthcare workers, and job dissatisfaction among hospital nurses is four times greater than the average for all US workers. 43% of nurses involved in this study that reported job dissatisfaction intended to leave their job within the upcoming year. (Aiken et al.)

The study by Aiken et al in 2002 revealed that there was a higher chance of nurses experiencing job related burnout in hospitals with high Patient nurse ratios. Further, nurses in institutions which had the highest rates of patient to nurse ratios were twice likely to suffer from dissatisfaction from their jobs. These influenced the decisions of nurses to leave their current jobs and thus creating more staffing problems that would lead to more negative patient outcomes.

Instability with nurse staffing is costly and not only the financial aspect of it, unstable nurse staffing and turnover can result in inadequate care, decrease productivity, and cause poor work environment, and cause additional turnover. Studies have shown that hospitals with lower nursing turnover rates have lower risk-adjusted mortality and lower lengths of stay (Minority Nurse, 2013). There are multiple recruitment initiatives that healthcare organizations can be instituted to assist in reversing the nursing shortage. External initiatives might consist of offering referral bonuses, working collaboratively with nursing schools as primary clinical site rotations, hiring new graduate nurses, establishing residency programs, targeting more males for the field, and having clinical nurses visit high schools to increase students' interest in the health care field are ways to combat the shortage of nurses.

Other burnout research has focused on the linkage between burnout and important work outcomes. For example, some studies have established the connection between higher levels of nurse burnout and poorer quality of patient care (Leiter et al. 1998, Vahey et al. 2004, Laschinger & Leiter 2006). Burnout nurses tend to have their patients and their patients’ family with greater degree of complaints than patients who are cared for by nurses who are not suffering from burnout. They also complain of being verbally abused by these nurses

Nurses, always involved in patient care, sometimes experience detrimental effects with prolonged stress or “burnout” during their career throughout the years. Burnout is defined as an extended response to physical or emotional stressors. Some examples of these stressors are; memories of witnessing death, patient and family suffering, emotional stress of losing patients, feeling emotionally and physically drained, or emotional disconnect from staff which can all contribute to burnout. As a result, nurses can experience; exhaustion, anxiety, dissatisfaction and low capacity. Overall, burnout can have negative effects not just on the emotional and physical health of nurses but also on; patient satisfaction, outcomes and mortality of nurses and patients. Although, there are ways to reduce or prevent these negative effects of burnout from manifesting. For example, nurses can apply interventions to reduce these risks including; staff support, onsite counselors and psychiatrists for nurses and salary increases and reimbursement opportunities for nurses through clinical ladder programs. Nurses can also start by just saying no to certain requests, being aware of their tolerance level, by taking care of themselves and having fun outside of work. On the other hand, others do not think nursing burnout is fatal and nurses just need a break from their job to initiate change. Although, the issue of burnout is prevalent in nurse’s careers which need to be addressed more in society in

With the problem of nursing shortage in the health care setting, this can have a long term effect on the organization budget as a result of reduction in the quality of care and overall outcome of the patient’s health. The number of nursing staff it takes for the facility to run effectively, should become a priority for the organization. As the acuity level of the patient’s entering the hospital continues to rise, the number and skills of nursing staff should increase to meet the patient level of care. Having lower numbers in nursing staff, can result in higher incidences of hospital acquired pneumonia, urinary tract infection, decubitus and falls with injuries. After conducting an interview with two co-workers, there

The ongoing instability evidenced from the high mobility of qualified nurses in the nursing workforce has raised many questions about the issue of nursing shortage and nurse turnover (Gates & Jones, 2007). The paper below discusses the issues of nursing shortage and nurse turnover. The paper also describes how leaders as well as managers in the nursing fraternity and other leaders can resolve those problems effectively and the different applicable principles, skills, roles of the leader, and theories of leadership and management.