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Nursing Shortage and Burnout

In: Social Issues

Submitted By stefanib110
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Pages 3
October 19, 2012
Nursing Statistics, Shortage, and Burnt Out

According to The Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE), Nursing has been among the fastest growing occupational fields, and the demand for nurses is expected to continue as baby boomers retire, creating a need to replace retiring nurses and care for the aging population. Nurses are integral to our health care system; however, their profession is made more difficult by unsafe working conditions, causes of burnout, and being an underpaid profession. Ultimately, these difficulties not only affect nurses, but jeopardize safe and efficient patient care.
According to the DPE 2012 fact sheet, there are an estimated 500,000 RNs in the U.S. who are not practicing their profession, in part because of difficult working conditions of nurses that are exacerbated by limited staffing and long working hours. Additionally, with managed care restructuring the health care industry in the 1990s, hospitals reduced staffing levels to lower costs. Nurses now care for more patients during a shift, which has led to a number of problems for both nurses and patients. Overworking results in injury: 39% percent of RN injuries resulting in missing work were attributed to overexertion. Many hospitals routinely require nurses to work unplanned or mandatory overtime and to “float” to departments outside their expertise. Over 60% percent of RNs report being forced to work voluntary overtime, which leads to Nurses’ cardiovascular health suffering from working long shifts and overtime. In a 2010 study, researchers showed a clear link between frequent overtime work and incidents of heart disease, with workers reporting three to four hours of overtime work per day being 1 to 6 times more likely to have cardiovascular health disorders.
Many RNs also complain that current workloads cause burnout. Burnout can be described by

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