Essay on Problem in the Nursing and Health Profession

The nursing profession is seen as a rewarding but a challenging career. It has many problems that need to be addressed by effective legislation. According to the research carried out by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the largest healthcare profession is represented by the nursing sector which has over 3.1 nurses with an additional 2.6 million licensed RNs. The biggest problem facing the health profession is nursing staff crisis and nurses discontent. As the hospital cost increase and the nurses represent the highest number of the workforce, the health care sector often targets them to lower the healthcare costs. Hospital staffing crisis has been brought due to hospital CEOs who see the intensifying health care cost increase as a threat to the business.

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The problem has been worsening each day as the hospital management aiming their investment to advanced medical technologies while at the same time the fail to maintain sufficient staff levels. There is corporate greed which has overtaken the patient safety and care. The problem is systemic because hospitals have their primary focus to be corporate giants shifting the precedence to increasing on profits and not on safe patient care. Additionally, some nurses have become increasingly dissatisfied with their jobs especially those under the age of 30 planning to leave their current job (Aiken et al., 2012). Such occurrence is encouraged by poor working conditions including inadequate staffing, increase in overtime, inadequate wages, heavy workload, lack of enough support staff among others. (U.S. General Accounting Office, 2001). The nursing staffing crisis and dissatisfaction of the registered nurses with the existing working environments have taken a toll. They feel that adverse health outcome and patient safety lead to increased physical and psychological stress, patient deaths, frustrations and burnout (Aiken et al., 2012).

To solve the problem of nurses under-staffing, one of the solutions that has been identified is to adopt safe staffing RN Ratio law as was the case with California. The federal legislation is a rule that each state in America is forced to observe. Unless this problem is addressed in such a manner, it may persist even longer (Harrison, Gregory, Mundle, and Boyle (2011). In 2000, the deficit was estimated to be at 6% with the number predicted to rise by 29% by 2020. The second solution to solve the problem is adapting recruitment and retention policies. While recruitment would add up the required number of nurses, retention strategies would be used to target the reasons they want to leave their profession. Retention involves improving both the monetary and non-monetary incentives that negatively affect their profession. It includes improving the working conditions, mixing skills, task shifting and workforce planning (Beech, 2005).

Investing in domestic nurse education would increase future nurse supply. Import of nurse labor force is a problem that leads to understaffing and complicates retention efforts. The government should work together with the health sector to address the shortage by providing federal funding to hospitals. Financial constraints facing the health sector can be addressed to improve nurses recruitment (Brennan, Are-Haral. 2006). Maintaining an adequate nursing staff and improving their working condition is a long process that can only be solved by having inter-parties dedication in implementing strategies and policies (Durano, 2014). Health as a national issue requires a national solution that would incorporate all the players in the sector.

References

Aiken, Linda H, Douglas M Sloane, Luk Bruyneel, Koen Van den Heede, WalterSermeus, and RN4CAST Consortium. (2012). Nurses Reports of Working Conditionsand Hospital Quality of Care in 12 Countries in Europe. International Journal ofNursing Studies 50 (2): 143153. doi:10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2012.11.009.

Beech, D. J. (2005). Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality. Journal of the National Medical Association, 97(9), 1308.

Brenne, Are-Haral. 2006. The Health Care Workforce in Europe. Learning fromExperience: Norway. In The Health Care Workforce in Europe. Learning fromExperience, edited by Bernd Rechel, Carl-Ardy Dubois, and Martin McKee. UnitedKingdom.

Durano, R. A. (2014). Nursing shortages in Norway and England: Status quo, implications and policy interventions (Master's thesis, Oslo and Akershus University College).

General Accounting Office. Nursing workforcerecruitment and retention of nurses and nurse aides is a growing concern. Washington, DC: United States General Accounting Office; 2001. No. GAO-01-750T.

Harrison, Gregory, Mundle, and Boyle (2011). The English Health Care System. InInternational Profiles of Health Care Systems: Australia, Canada, Denmark, England,France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden,Switzerland, and the United States - The Commonwealth Fund.