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Analysis: The Nursing Shortage

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The Nursing Shortage The history of nurses in our textbook, “Policy and Politics for Nurses and Other Health Professionals”, seems to suggest a deficit in nursing staff since the early 1900’s (Nickitas, Middaugh & Aries, 2016). As healthcare has transformed from the late 1800’s to the 2010’s, nursing has had to alter its practice to remain relevant and current with each era. This paper will share insight into the potential causes of the current nursing shortage, offer awareness of how nurses are preparing themselves to work in this setting and suggest methods through legislation to alleviate safety concern produced by limited staffing.
Events Leading to the Nursing Shortage Current predictions by the American Healthcare Association (2009) …show more content…
Change is inevitable to handle to current staffing trends. It is predicted that more care will transition to the community setting as we shift our focus from treating illnesses to prevention programs and health promotion (Blais & Hayes, 2016). Campaign for Action, an initiative led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and AARP is designed to foster nursing into the future (“Campaign for Action”, 2018). Supporting nursing with Enhanced Nursing Licensure, decreases the wait time for starting a new job in this mobile environment to get nurses working quickly can reduce staffing strains. Seeing the powerful workforce behind nursing, the initiative supports nursing building a “culture of health” as nurses contribute to the full degree of their abilities and encourages the transformation of healthcare through …show more content…
These cut backs, including staffing, set the stage for unsafe practices. For these reasons, nurses and nursing organizations have turned to policy makers to assist in creating legislation to support their concerns. Staffing ratios is a recent law which prevents a nurse from being forced to care for more patients than is safely capable. According to the ANA’s website (2018), the bill also ensure that nurses not be forced to work on a unit without adequate orientation, has procedures in place to handle complaints, allows for monetary penalties for non-compliance, has whistle-blower protection and public reporting of staffing is required. In an article by Cimiotti, J. & Aiken, L. (2012), hospital infections, especially urinary tract infections, show a significant association to understaffed units. Adding just one patient to a nurse’s assignment increases the change of a UTI by 0.1%. Patient and nurse safety is utmost important in healthcare and legislating requirements are the means to support

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