The Shortage of Full-Time Nurses Essay

 At Merakey, full-time nurses were scarce before the outbreak. After the pandemic, it became even more difficult to retain nurses in full-time positions. The dearth of full-time nurses has had an effect on patient care, teamwork, and admissions. There is only one nurse in charge of the admissions process at the moment. One nurse should get the report and talk to the nurse practitioner or doctor about medication balancing. After the initial evaluation and consent forms have been signed, patient and family education is complete. The nurse then sends the prescription to the pharmacy by entering the list of medications. If the patient arrives during the night shift, the nurse is still responsible for completing the care plan, and the night nurse will handle the admission laboratories. Therefore, an untrained nurse may feel overwhelmed by this procedure. Because of a lack of permanent staff, the hospital must rely on temporary nurses from an agency. Therefore, crucial duties go uncompleted as a result of the lack of assessment training among agency nurses.

Problem

The United States continues to suffer from a severe shortage of registered nurses. The lack of available funding is likely the root reason of the shortage of full-time nurses. The magnitude of the nursing shortage is measured by the number of full-time equivalent positions in the healthcare industry that have gone unfilled for registered nurses. Lack of sufficient funding to guarantee the number of budgeted employment for nurses is a major contributor to the nursing shortage. Nursing practitioners are needed in ambulatory care surgical settings (Feldman, 2003). Factors such as an aging population with numerous current and imminent retirements, a dearth of surgical educational resources and exposure, and difficulties in both recruiting and maintaining perioperative nursing staff (Feldman, 2003) should also be taken into account. Since this area of medicine has such a significant impact on the health of the nation, it is crucial that the shortage of full-time nurses be resolved as soon as possible.

Objectives and Criteria

The potential solution to this problem lies in creating permanent positions for nurses so that they can be more easily recruited and retained. Therefore, the target audience includes both practicing nurses and future nurses. In six months, it would be ideal to have made the necessary progress. If salaries for nurses are increased and a sign-on bonus of two years is offered, the organization will be able to keep on more full-time nurses. Managers can improve patient outcomes by retaining and training more full-time nurses and by increasing the frequency with which staff members exchange information effectively. Staff members, patients, and their loved ones all constitute a stakeholder community that stands to gain from the initiatives. This improvement will occur in a healthcare setting, and it will be evaluated based on the opinions of the nurses that work there.

Existing Literature

Many scientific works discuss how to keep experienced nurses on staff, underscoring the significance of the nursing profession. In their article, Jeffs et al. (2014) suggest that leaders create reassuring environments and release tailored plans of action to decrease the vulnerabilities that this generation of nurses suffers. Methods known to counteract fatigue and influence engagement of the older nursing workforce include assessing their clinical skills, involving them in distinctive roles, having supportive management, building adjustable working conditions to lessen exhaustion and injury, and implementing flexible hours and reduced labor hours for late career nursing staff (Jeffs et al., 2014). Redley et al. (2014) argued that modernizing the inpatient admissions process is essential for relieving nurses' stress. The participants in this study were hospital staff, and the experiment was designed to measure their levels of stress during the admission of a new patient (Redley et al., 2014). Modifying the admissions process to place more value on teamwork and task completion reduced stress, boosted morale, and increased job satisfaction.

Finally, it's important to assess the challenges faced by the nursing faculty workforce and propose remedies for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of nurse educators. There is a wealth of wisdom, experience, and leadership skills among the older faculty members (Falk, 2007). Full or part-time employment of experienced nurses is beneficial for the nursing industry, patients, and communities. Therefore, it's important to provide nurses with ways to manage stress and a choice between full- and part-time schedules.

Make a Plan

The proposed adjustment was arrived at after studying existing literature on the subject of nurse workload and care outcomes. More nurses will be hired or retained as part of the plan so that patients receive better care and the burden of admitting new patients is shared more evenly. According to the new approach, multiple nurses would be responsible for different parts of the admissions process. Thus, while one nurse completes the first evaluation and educates the patient and family, another can reconcile drugs with the doctor and enter the care plan and prescriptions into the system. The most pressing issue at hand is keeping on permanent nurses for such procedures. Because of this, the plan's interventions will include monitoring the workload, stress levels, and the provision of nursing training in addition to hiring more nurses.

The administration of the hospitals and the human resources division are possible culprits. In the first scenario, upper management must realize the importance of expanding the nursing staff and allocate greater resources to this end. Managers in the nursing department should also show their appreciation and support for their staff. In the latter scenario, it will be up to Human Resources to meet the needs of the new hires while also actively seeking to fill open positions with qualified individuals. Patients and nurses alike will benefit from the intervention's improvements to the working environment, with the former enjoying more pleasant conditions in which to do their jobs and the latter obtaining better treatment.

It's possible that the plan's financial ramifications might have both positive and negative effects. One drawback is the larger sum of money needed for recruitment and retention of nursing professionals due to higher salaries and other costs associated with a larger workforce. However, one of the benefits is reduced need for lawsuits as a result of higher quality care leading to fewer medical errors. Management's reluctance to increase headcount is one potential roadblock. The idea here is that additional resources will be needed, or existing ones would have to be reallocated. The urgency with which these adjustments are required, however, cannot be overstated. In order to recruit more workers, raise compensation for nurses in existing departments, monitor changes and get feedback, the proposed timescale for the provided project is six months. It can be seen that the offered approach is a segmented intervention with the twin goals of recruitment and retention.

References

Falk, N. L. (2007). Strategies to enhance retention and effective utilization of aging nurse faculty. The Journal of Nursing Education, 46(4), 165-169.

Feldman, H. (2003). The nursing shortage: Strategies for recruitment and retention in clinical practice and education. Springer Publishing Company.

Jeffs, L., Nincic, V., Hayes, L., Jerome, D., & Malecki, V. (2014). Insights from nurse leaders to optimize retaining late career nurses. Nursing Leadership (Toronto, Ont.), 27(3), 29–39.

Redley, B., Douglas, T., Hoon, L., de Courten, B., & Hutchinson, A. M. (2022). Nurses’ harm prevention practices during admission of an older person to the hospital: A multi‐method qualitative study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 78(11), 3745-3759.