REPLY 1

The bureau of labor statistics projects increased number of employed registered nurses by 16 percent. The above growth will occur because of different reasons. First, the demand for health care services will increase due aging population and this happens because older individuals tend to have more medical problems than younger people have (Marć, Bartosiewicz, Burzyńska, Chmiel & Januszewicz, 2019). Patient protection and Affordable Care Act has made health care more accessible and affordable thus increasing the demand for health services.

However, despite having an increase in the demand for health services there is a looming shortage in nurses. The biggest challenge in healthcare involve demographic changes pushing expansion of workforce and time consumed in educating and training new health workers to meet the needs of baby boomers. Factors that have contributed to nursing faculty shortage include; low salaries for educators as compared to clinicians, aging population, increased nurse staff retirement ,late point in career development of entering educative roles, and inability to fill open faculty roles. Snavely (2016), says there are several solutions that may help in solving nursing shortage including wage increase, subsidizing funding, hiring minority and foreign nurses as well as mass campaigns aimed at improving professional image. Moreover, increasing wages for nurses will not only motivate the already employed nurses but also those willing to join the nursing profession.

References

Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2019). A nursing shortage–a prospect of global and local policies. International nursing review, 66(1), 9-16.

Snavely, T. M. (2016). A brief economic analysis of the looming nursing shortage in the United States. Nursing Economics, 34(2), 98-101.

REPLY2

Nursing shortages for me results when there is an inadequate number of nurses to care the sick population. This has been an ongoing issue in nursing profession and can be linked to many causes. The events that have contributed or will contribute to the issue of nursing shortages according to Whitney, (2018) include the fact that right now a larger number of the nursing workforce are almost at their retirement age, there is shortage of nursing school to take all those interested in the nursing profession, nurses are quitting because of too much stress from the work which is a result of the less nurses caring for too much sick population. In 2029, the last of the baby boomer generation will reach retirement age, giving rise to 73% increase in Americans 65 years of age and older, 41 million in 2011 compared to 71 million in 2019 and will this number, there are not enough nurses to care for them, (Haddad, Annamaraju & Tonney-Buttler, 2020) Nurses are mainly females and during their child bearing ages, some cut back on the job to go raise a family, few come back afterwards and others do not leading to shortage of nurses(Haddad, Annamaraju & Tonney-Buttler, 2020) Violence in the healthcare environment contribute to shortages in nursing, there is always emotional threat and physical abuse in addition to the already stressful job, this affects job satisfaction and efforts being put at work by the nurses, this takes a toll physically and emotionally on the nurses and emergency and psychiatric nurses are at a higher risk for this and it leads to quitting and shortage of nurses at the long run(Haddad, Annamaraju & Tonney-Buttler, 2020)

One of the ways that the nursing profession is trying to combat the shortages include Nursing schools forming strategic partnerships and looking for help in private organizations to help in getting more nursing students through expansion of clinical placement sites, funding more faculties and supporting interprofessional engagement (American Association of Colleges of Nursing,(AACN) 2019). Another way of resolving the shortage issue is through provision of fellowships and loan forgiveness to nurses who agree to become faculty lecturer after schooling in order to increase the number of teachers to meet up with the number of students because shortage of teachers in nursing schools have led to shortage of nursing students which has also led to shortages of nurses.(AACN, 2019).

                                                                                 References

American Association of colleges of Nursing, (2019) Nursing shortage. Retrieved from https://www.aacnnursing.org/News-Information/Fact-Sheets/Nursing-Shortage assessed by 23rd August 2020

Haddad, L. M, Annamaraju, P & Tonney-Butler, T. J. (2020) Nursing shortage. Statpearls. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/

Whitney, S. (2018) Future of Nursing in an evolving healthcare system. Trends in healthcare: A nursing perspective. Retrieved from https://lc.gcumedia.com/nrs440vn/trends-in-health-care-a-nursing-perspective/v1.1/#/chapter/1