Introduction
The stable work of the healthcare sector is one of the major determinants of the nation’s health. It is critical to guarantee that all individuals have access to care to manage their conditions. Furthermore, the challenges health workers face are becoming increasingly diverse each year, requiring greater effort to provide specialized, customized patient care. At the same time, the emergence of various problems undermines the sector’s readiness to respond to new problems and preserve high efficiency levels. Addressing these issues and promoting positive change is a critical task today.
Thus, the nursing shortage is a fundamental problem in the healthcare sector nowadays. The shortage of skilled and trained specialists affects all areas and worsens outcomes. For this reason, it is essential to find a solution and promote positive change within a sector. It would lead to higher patient satisfaction levels and treatment outcomes.
Nursing Shortage as a Healthcare Issue
The nursing shortage problem is not new to healthcare; however, in recent years, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become especially topical. The high turnover rates and inability to retain workers mean that the healthcare sector faces challenges in providing quality patient care due to significant nurse losses (Soósová, 2021). Furthermore, the problem affects patients and puts them at risk, as it becomes more difficult to follow established protocols and care for them.
Patients suffer from missed care and the growing number of infections contracted in the hospital (Haddad et al., 2023). These consequences of the nursing shortage are critical, meaning that the problem is significant and requires immediate action. The question is also multifaceted, as it is associated with specialists’ well-being and their ability to perform their jobs and provide care. Thus, resolving the problem at the local level by promoting positive change within a single selected unit will lay the foundation for future, more substantial improvement.
Factors and Implications of the Issue
Thus, the nursing shortage has a specific background that should be considered to design an effective solution. First, the lack of desire to continue working is associated with stress. Nurses experience extreme pressure, especially during the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Martin et al., 2023). As a result, they lose motivation to work and to deliver patient care. Second, around half of health workers experience burnout: 45% report physical exhaustion, and 51% admit mental health exhaustion (Lasater et al., 2021).
The problem of burnout is critical to the sector as it reduces productivity and increases the risk of mistakes. For nurses, it also means lower retention rates. The lack of security at the workplace and the fear of death are also among the reasons promoting the higher rates of nursing burnout (Tamata & Mohammadnezhad, 2023). As a result, the complex background of the problem influences the choice of the methods that might help to address it.
Furthermore, the scope of the nursing shortage problem is evident in its impact on healthcare and related factors. For instance, the reduction in the number of educated and experienced specialists increases the risk of malpractice and medication errors. According to relevant statistics, such events are increasing; 60% are related to patient deaths, and 40% are linked to inappropriate pharmaceutical choices (Yoon et al., 2022). It means that the healthcare sector suffers from the problem, and the quality of care worsens.
The nursing shortage leads to a significant reduction in the quality of care provided to different types of patients. Thus, treatment requirements are either partially or entirely unmet due to a shortage of nurses capable of providing specialized care (Haddad et al., 2023). Pressure ulcers, increased risk of health-associated infections, unexpected outcomes, and longer recovery times are often associated with the limited number of health workers who can provide the necessary care (Haddad et al., 2023).
In this way, the statistics show that the nursing shortage is a critical issue that negatively affects the quality of patient care and the sector’s overall performance. Existing policies might cause it, barriers to training and enrollment, high stress and burnout rates, and a lack of perspectives or payment (Tamata & Mohammadnezhad, 2023). The problem is systemic and should be addressed by finding practical solutions.
Conclusion
In this way, recent data show the scope and significance of the problem. The nursing shortage promotes numerous adverse effects on the healthcare sector, patients’ health, and units’ ability to treat clients and guarantee their recovery. For this reason, there is a need for an effective solution that will promote positive change within the discussed environment.
The transformation should consider the primary causes of the problem, such as existing policies, burnout, stress, and a complex working environment. Further disregard of the problem will lead to the issue becoming increasingly complex and the need for additional resources and funding to address it. In this regard, discussing the nursing shortage and designing a local-level intervention to address it by engaging the most influential stakeholders and promoting reconsideration of staffing and nurse retention policies is critical.
References
Haddad, L., Annamaraju. P., & Toney-Butler, T. (2023). Nursing shortage. StatPearls.
Lasater, K. B., Aiken, L. H., Sloane, D., French, R., Martin, B., Alexander, M., & McHugh, M. D. (2021). Patient outcomes and cost savings associated with hospital safe nurse staffing legislation: An observational study. BMJ Open, 11(12).
Martin, B., Kaminski-Ozturk, N., O’Hara, C., & Smiley, R. (2023). Examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on burnout and stress among U.S. nurses. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 14(1), 4–12.
Soósová, M. S. (2021). Association between nurses’ burnout, hospital patient safety climate and quality of nursing care. The Central European Journal of Nursing and Midwifery, 12.
Tamata, A. T., & Mohammadnezhad, M. (2023). A systematic review study on the factors affecting shortage of nursing workforce in the hospitals. Nursing Open, 10(3), 1247–1257.
Yoon, S., Cho, S. I., Shin, S., Lee, W., Ko, Y., Moon, J. Y., & Lee, H. J. (2022). An analysis of judicial cases concerning analgesic-related medication errors in the republic of Korea. Journal of Patient Safety, 18(2).