South Carolina Nurse. (2021). ANA's proposed policy solutions to address the nurse staffing
shortage crisis. Blind Peer Reviewed
ANA’s president Ernest Grant wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services to plead the immediate action to address the nursing staff
shortage facing the U.S. today during the pandemic. As a result, hospitals are overrun
their staff capacity due to the increase of Delta variant. ANA is worried that the severe
shortage of nurses will have long-term consequences for the whole health care
system, and ultimately, on the nation's health. Therefore, ANA is pushing the
Administration to declare a national nurse staffing crisis and take immediate action to
produce both short- and long-term solutions to ensure the nursing workforce in the
future.
This article revealed the reported shortages of nursing staff all over America. For
example, Mississippi has seen a decrease of 2,000 nurses since the beginning of 2021.
Moreover, Tennessee had 1,000 fewer staff at the beginning pandemic and called on
National Guard for reinforcements. Furthermore, Texas is recruiting 2,5000 nurses from
outside the state. In addition, Louisiana has had 6,000 unfulfilled nursing positions
across the state since Delta surges. Lastly, according to Trusted Health, 39% of
nurses aged 20-39 decreased their commitment to nursing.
The strength of this study is when the author calls on HHS to utilize the following
policy to address the awful nursing shortage: gather stakeholders to develop a short
and long-term solution to staffing, work with Medicare and Medicaid Services in
promoting payment equity, educate the nation on the importance of the Covid-19
vaccine, maintain a nursing workforce that meets ongoing and future staffing needs,
providing additional resources in recruitment and retention incentives.
This article aims to enlighten the nation about the problem of the nursing staff
shortages so that measures can be taken to ensure the quality of patient care in the
hospitals or any other health care field for now and the future. It offered realistic
strategies, and talked about the issues and gives different strategies in contending
shortage concepts. As a result, the author did a great job in using different concepts in
better understanding the problems.
This article helped me realize the effects of Covid-19 have intensified the nursing
staff shortages. In addition, as the highly contagious Delta variant lashed out in the
U.S., most nurses chose to work in a less stressful nursing job since nurses are burnout
both physically and emotionally. This prompted me to conduct additional research on
the effects of the nursing shortage during the pandemic. In the article "Nurses Unions
Can Help Reduce Stress, Burnout, Depression, and Compassion Fatigue During the
COVID-19 Pandemic, Part 3", the authors went over the experiences of nurses in New
York of the extreme stress due to the numbers of hospitalized patients, and uncertain
clinical protocols in treating the virus. In addition, lack of adequate personal protection
equipment (PPE), gaps in competency related to limited knowledge about the virus and its
treatment, being floated to areas outside of nurses' clinical expertise, and nurse-to-
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