Running head: NURSING SHORTAGE 1

Issues with the Nursing Shortage

Morgan Buchenic

Youngstown State University

NURSING SHORTAGE 2
 Abstract

This paper will be focusing on the topic the nursing shortage and how it affects everyone. It will

be focusing on the main points of: 1) Contributing factors, 2) impact on patient care, and 3)

Strategies to address. As a nursing student I am very interested in learning about this shortage

and all the opportunities there will be for me and my classmates in the near future. It is important

for people to become aware of this shortage and to hopefully see the numbers of nurses continue

to increase. Having good nurses is important.

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Issues dealing with the Nursing Shortage

 There are many contributing factors that impact the nursing shortage. The majority of the

nursing workforce is nearing retirement age. According to a 2013 survey conducted by the

National Council of State Boards of Nursing and The Forum of State Nursing Workforce

Centers, “55% of the RN workforce is age 50 or older. The Health Resources and Services

Administration projects that more than 1 million registered nurses will reach retirement age

within the next 10 to 15 years. Insufficient staffing is raising the stress level of nurses, impacting

job satisfaction, and driving many nurses to leave the profession.” In the March-April 2005 issue

of Nursing Economic$, “Dr. Peter Buerhaus and colleagues found that more than 75% of RNs

believe the nursing shortage presents a major problem for the quality of their work life, the

quality of patient care, and the amount of time nurses can spend with patients. Looking forward,

almost all surveyed nurses see the shortage in the future as a catalyst for increasing stress on

nurses (98%), lowering patient care quality (93%) and causing nurses to leave the profession

(93%).” According to a study in the October 2002 Journal of the American Medical Association,

“nurses reported greater job dissatisfaction and emotional exhaustion when they were

responsible for more patients than they can safely care for.”

Due to the dissatisfaction and retirement, there's a huge impact it has on the patient's. It

increases death rates. When there is a shortage of nurses there are not enough nurses to care for

each individual needing help. A research team led by Dr. Ann E. Tourangeau studied 46,993

patients admitted to the hospital with heart attacks, stroke, pneumonia and blood poisoning. The

authors found that: "Hospitals with higher proportions of baccalaureate-prepared nurses tended

NURSING SHORTAGE 4

to have lower 30-day mortality rates. Our findings indicated that a 10% increase in the

proportion of baccalaureate prepared nurses was associated with 9 fewer deaths for every 1,000
discharged patients." This means that having a BSN is more beneficial when becoming a

registered nurse than just an associate's. It is more schooling but you learn more on how to care

for your patient and take care of their needs when keeping them alive. It is your job to educate

yourself to know what to do in certain situations as a nurse and if you are not sure you need to

seek help. It is important to decrease death rates, it is part of our job and such a caring

profession. It also increases nurses fatigue. They are required to care for too many patients at

once due to the shortage and can’t manage that with the amount of sleep and long hours they

have to deal with. The performance levels drop as work periods become longer and sleep loss

increases. If there wasn't such a shortage there would be a good amount of nurses in each facility

and would limit the amount of patients each nurse was responsible to care for. It could decrease

the death rates by a lot by having your attention more focused on a few instead of 6-10.

According to the Journal of Sleep Research, “Staying awake for 17 hours has the same effect on

performance as having a blood alcohol content of 0.05%.” Safe levels of staffing are essential to

providing a safer environment for all workers, especially those with responsibility for patient

care. It is very dangerous to be caring for patients when sleep deprived.

Strategies to address the problem. “THE ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON Foundation

(RWJF) is dedicated to improving the health and health care of all Americans. Central to this

mission is transforming the way care is delivered at the bedside to reduce the shortage in nurse

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staffing and improve the quality of nursing care.” The John A. Hartford Foundation, in New

York City focuses on improving health care for older Americans, authorized more than $40

million over eight years to support geriatric nursing programs. A key initiative is a scholarship
program that has supported more than 100 nurse scholars and fellows to conduct research in

gerontological nursing. “The California Endowment has made a sizable investment in addressing

the nurse shortage in California, through a $1.4 million grant to prepare foreign-trained nurses,

physicians, and dentists for the licensure exams that allow them to practice in the state.”

In conclusion, everyone needs to become familiar with the shortage. The shortage is

causing issues in everyday work environments. There is insufficient staffing that therefore

increases death rates. If you are in nursing or know someone who is interested in nursing speak

up and encourage them. It is a very rewarding career by helping others. It can be very stressful

but with a good amount of staffing it can decrease the stress tremendously. Nurses working long

shifts and are exhausted do not perform as effectively as nurses with adequate sleep. If there

were more nurses, nurses would not have to work such long shifts at times. There are programs

and foundations out there trying to help out with this problem so everyone can become aware of

it. Now, I hope you are better informed about the nursing shortage, Contributing factors, Impact

on patient care, Strategies to address. Spread the word. I hope to see the numbers of nurses

continue to increase as the years go on. It is a great career and it's important to have good nurses

to help out people with poor health.

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References

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http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage

What happens to patients when nurses are short-staffed? (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2016,
 from http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/faq/short-staffed.html

Clarke, S. P. (n.d.). Nurse Staffing and Patient Care Quality and Safety - Patient Safety and

Quality - NCBI Bookshelf. Retrieved November 10, 2016, from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2676/

And, S. B. (2006). Susan B. Hassmiller. Retrieved November 10, 2016, from

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/25/1/268.full.html

Lamond, N., & Dawson, D. (1999). Quantifying the performance impairment associated with

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10646165