This nursing shortage is putting a lot of pressure on the hospitals and this has made the hospital operations to be challenged by a lot of challenges such as compromised patient care and overworked staff. As the number of nurses reduces, hospitals are unable to provide quality health services; the patients end up waiting longer for services and care from the limited number of nurses and the dangers of mistakes increase. It is therefore not a staffing issue but a full-blown crisis that has far reaching implications on healthcare productivity.
Nurses caught up in human traffic become highly exhausted in their line of duty, resulting in little job satisfaction and increased turnover. They quit the job early because of stress, exhaustion and lack of support and this compounds the problem of a shortage of healthcare workers in the country. Due to inadequate staffing, some of the remaining nurses are overworked, which has adverse effects to themselves and the patients.
Healthcare quality is also negatively impacted as hospitals are not able to serve the population adequately. Inadequate staffing results in delayed treatments, mismanagement of critical conditions, and increased mortality rates. Nurses in critical care involve themselves with overseeing the condition of their patients, handling the medications given to those patients, as well as adversative conditions that may come with the diseases. Staff are able to cope with various situations effectively and give their best but as the number of patients increases these errors are likely to occur resulting in loss of many lives.
There is a financial challenge in this area since the hospitals will be incurring increased cost on overtime wages, on temporary employees as well as on recruitment. This is because; when one is unable to retain skilled nurses, this leads to increased expenses on hiring and disrupts the flow of a hospital. In addition, the patient dissatisfaction increases when quality reduces and this influences hospital ratings as well as funding leading to formation of a vicious cycle that compromises the healthcare systems.
Solutions to solve the nursing shortage are as follows; A better standard of pay, improved working environment, and upgraded educational facility. These issues necessitate hospitals and policymakers to pay more attention to its retention approaches and funding its training programs. If the situation remains unchecked, the situation will only worsen, create additional burden to the healthcare systems, and negatively impact patients in the future. It is quite clear that there is an urgent need to resolve this problem.
Conclusion
The shortage of nurses is a very important problem that requires an urgent solution to eliminate the negative impacts to health care facilities and patients. Therefore, without solving the problem of burnout and the lack of staff and funds, the quality of healthcare will remain low. It is up to the country’s hospitals and
health care policymakers to find ways for crafting strategies that would retain and maintain the quality of nurses of the future.
