subject: 5 Reasons For Nursing Staff Shortages [print this page] A booming young population coupled with their aggressive healthcare demands in the forthcoming decades caused by aging, has sounded the alarm for timely stocktaking of the present day imbalances to devise the ways and means to correct them. Policymakers, private institutions, service providers and healthcare professionals are seized of the fact of the impending looming shortage in virtually all categories of medical care. This review is intended and limited to presenting a brief perspective on nurses and nursing as a specific professional category.
*Aging and Retention
An analysis of the age profile of nurses highlights the fact that, with existing nurses advancing in age, the issue of retirement replacements is an area of growing concern. A declining career interest in nursing, with a wide choice of career options with better remuneration being readily available, is further aggravating the problem.
*Sagging Job Satisfaction
Discreet unofficial recent inquiries made in several hospitals, nursing homes and clinics reveals that a large and sizeable population of nurses has reported dissatisfaction, attributable to a wide range of disparate factors. Unsanitary conditions and growing corruption have aggravated the decline of moral and ethical standards even in medical care leading several youngsters, in particular, to quit the unbearable scene and contribute to increasing attrition.
*Sluggish Wages
Nursing wages on average have done no better than to keep pace with inflation in a recessionary scenario, despite healthy national growth rates getting registered. Greater impetus is needed in attracting nursing talent by offering rationally derived wages. Intelligent use of the media in proclaiming nursing as a promising option needs to be urgently examined.
*Education and Workforce Retention
There has been an inconsistency in new entrants joining the nursing workforce, in tune with graduates getting churned out of the various nursing affiliated courses. There appears to be a distinct mismatch between supply and demand, which needs to be immediately corrected in all streams of nursing.
*Nursing Future
The present may not appear very bleak as of now, but if appropriate corrective steps are not initiated in time, the demand will far outstrip the supply beyond manageable proportions leading to a chaotic situation on the nursing front. Investment made in education and recruitment of the next generation of nurses can be best realized with a reasonable return, only if effective steps are taken to assure career mobility, apart from addressing the issues mentioned above.
