Nursing Shortages

Essay # 58031

Education > Adult Education
Medical and Health
Medical and Health > Nursing

Nursing Shortages

An overall look at the problem of nurse shortages and suggestions on how the problem can be overcome.

1,986 words () | 3 sources | APA | 2005 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper focuses on the nursing shortage in the health care sector, although it also goes into issues of how technology changes in the nursing environment can mean a better future for more nurses. The report focuses on the nursing shortage in the light of the fact that there is additional work piling up for those nurses who are still practicing, as more and more nurses leave the field, and fewer enter into it. This report also looks at increasing technology from a management perspective as a possible solution to the nursing shortage problem. Spending more on technology often means less for nurses, howeve,r and this must also be addressed from a management perspective. Therefore, simply hiring more nurses is not a long-term solution to the problem.

From the Paper:

"Nurses should have more educational benefits, thus attracting new talent to the nursing profession and ensuring that nurses would be able to get degrees. "In recent years, attendance at the New York State Nursing Association's multiday conferences has suffered because understaffed hospitals are reluctant to give nurses time off or the nurses are too busy to attend, said Mark Genovese, spokesperson for the NYSNA in Latham, N.Y. Money also is an issue. Nurses increasingly must rely on their own finances to attend meetings" (Myint, 2003). It would also be easier to cope with these issues if the nurse-patient ratio was decreased so that nurses do not have such a heavy workload.
Agency nurses should be cut back to allow more time for full-time nurses. Various nursing organizations across the country have implemented changes that address this very serious problem."