Good Essay On Nursing Shortage

Living in the state of California, I visited our local hospital recently. It took quite some time to be attended by the nurse. I had to ask at the reception what the problem could be. The response was that there was shortage of nurses. This refers to understaffing in the nursing field.
As a college student, interested in knowing the root causes of the problem, I was fascinated by Vignesh Ramachandran’s article from the USA Today “The new nursing shortage”. In the article, Vignesh explained that the shortage in the nursing school faculty which has seen many potential nurses’ being denied enrollment in nursing schools was one of the factors. He also underscored that ageing workforce, who entered the service in 1970’s, are expected to retire soon. Similar findings have been reported by Richardson (2011).
Vignesh (2014) also pointed out that the increase in elderly population which has seen the demand for nurses’ services increase over the years has led to current shortage. Furthermore, he addressed the problem of underfunding in nursing education and decreased rate of nursing school enrollment as additional factors. The current enrollment rates to entry-level baccalaureate programs stands at 2.6% (AACN, 2013) as compared to the expected increase in nurses jobs by 19% between 2012 to 2022 (United States Department of Labor,2014).
Nursing shortages have found far-reaching consequences including higher patient loads leading to hospital readmission, nurses’ fatigue, and high mortality rates in hospitals. I am in agreement with the writer’s explanation of the factors behind the current shortage of nurses and to address the issue, private support should be sought so as to increase access to nursing courses, increase in faculty capacity, and provision of scholarships as well as access to loans for students interested in the course, increasing remuneration, and promoting nursing careers through the media.

References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2013). Research and data. AACN. Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/research-data
Ramachandran (2014, May, 7). The new nursing shortage. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/07/ozy-nursing-shortage/8807937/
Richardson, K. A. (2011). The Impact of Retiring Baby Boomers on Nursing Shortage. The Journal of Global Health Care Systems, 1 (1), 1-16. Retrieved from http://jghcs.info/index.php/j/article/view/12