A national healthcare issue/stressor affecting healthcare systems across America for many years is the nursing shortage issue. The current nursing shortage has three parts; the aging population, and the limited supply of new nurses, and the aging workforce. Baby boomers play a critical role in the aging population. Right now, baby boomers are becoming close to retirement age; this means one out of every five people will be over the age of 65 (Haddad & Toney-Butler, 2020).
How healthcare issue/stressor may impact your work setting
With the shortage of nursing and the longer life expectancy of the aging population is growing at a faster rate than new nursing begin their career (Leung et al., 2020). As people age, their healthcare needs increase, creating more inpatient stays for the floor nurse to manage. With more patients needing medical attention, it will cause the crowded local emergency rooms, causing more nurses to work out of nurse to patient ratio at all levels of care. This, in turn, creates stressful work environments and staff burnout—ultimately, fewer nurses due to the staff turnover rate COVID-19 pandemic and Nursing Burnout discussion essay.
Describe how your health system work setting has responded to the healthcare issue/stressor
Currently, many local hospitals are now offering nurses a sign-on bonus to work at their facility. The bonuses are given over a year. My workplace has been using traveling nurses to help with the nursing shortage. My workplace needs to offer more incentives to all nurses. Nurses also need a better strategy to address staff and patient issues to management. Many times nurses voice concern and never hear back from management. I recently read an article where nurses left their job after being there for five years due to the managers’ lack of pay more attention to their nursing staff’s job satisfaction and the safety of their nurses (Marzieh Adel-Mehraban, & Azam Moladoost, 2020). With the COVID pandemic, the nursing shortage has become an even greater issue.
References
Haddad LM & Toney-Butler TJ. (2020, November 16). Nursing Shortage. StatPearls. Retrieved December 2, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
Leung, P. P. L., Wu, C. H., Kwong, C. K., & Ching, W. K. (2020). Nursing shortage in the public healthcare system: an exploratory study of Hong Kong. Enterprise
Marzieh Adel-Mehraban, & Azam Moladoost. (2020). Nursing Staff Shortage: How About Retention Rate? Preventive Care in Nursing and Midwifery Journal, 9(1), 40–48 COVID-19 pandemic and Nursing Burnout discussion essay.
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