Nursing Shortage and Its Effects on Healthcare Delivery Research Paper

 

 

Introduction

Despite the recent advances in nursing, including the introduction of the latest technology, the redesign of some of the nursing practices, and the incorporation of the latest tools into the provision of nursing services, the quality of the latter is quite unstable due to the shortage of nursing specialists. The reconsideration of the current time management approaches, as well as the promotion of personal and professional responsibility in nurses does not trigger major alterations, which is an obvious reason for concern. Therefore, the areas of the human resource approaches adopted in the contemporary nursing setting, the quality of the corresponding services, and the means of addressing the issue, can be considered the scope of the problem. The significance of the issue in question to nurses and nursing staff is obvious: by considering the existing solutions to the problem, one will be able to develop the strategy that will allow for both a major improvement in the nursing services quality and the rearrangement of nurses’ roles and responsibilities. Thus, it is crucial for nursing staff to be aware of the issue. The quality of the healthcare delivery and the efficacy of the nursing staff’s performance are the key dependent variables, whereas the nursing shortage and its increasing rates are the essential independent variables. Among the rest of the independent variables, the time management strategies, the recovery rates among the patients, nurses stress rates and satisfaction rates in nurses will be considered as well. Before the study is conducted, some of the terms that have been or will be used need definition and further clarification. The full list of terms and their definitions is provided below.

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Nursing shortage is the lack of nursing specialists within the environment of a certain healthcare facility or community that is supported by one or more healthcare facilities (Morgan & Lynn, 2009).

Burnout/Compassion fatigue is the state of psychological exhaustion, which occurs after a nurse becomes overly engaged with the wellbeing of the patient or is assigned with an unrealistic amount of work and, therefore, is incapable of experiencing an emotional connection with the patient anymore. As a result, the nurse ceases to be empathetic with the patient; moreover, the quality of the nurse’s work may drop significantly (Brunetto et al., 2013).

Social Exchange Theory is a set of sociological and psychological concepts that allow understanding the significance of change and stability (Flinkman, Leino-Kilpi & Salantera, 2010).

Organizational commitment is the understanding of one’s professional responsibilities and duties, as well as complete compliance with these duties and the existing code of ethics (Brunetto et al., 2013).

Perceived organizational support is an HRM approach, which presupposes a very delicate treatment of the staff and concern about the employees’ physical and emotional wellbeing, as well as an overall positive treatment of the nurses (Brunetto et al., 2013).

Career mobility is either a downward or an upward change in the position assumed (Flinkman et al., 2010).

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Personnel turnover is the average tenure of the nursing staff within an organization.

Much to the credit of the researchers addressing the issue, the current state of knowledge on the subject is quite impressive. The problem of the nursing shortage, including the reasons for the phenomenon to occur, the implications of nursing shortage for the reality of healthcare and the provision of the services of the required quality, the correlation between nursing shorting and staff satisfaction, and, eventually, the link between nursing shortage and the quality of the healthcare services have been researched extensively over the past few years. Nevertheless, the problem still remains unresolved due to the lack of a proper strategy, which could help address the issue of nursing shortage.

Literature Review

Nursing shortage as is currently understood has been caused by a number of factors. In developed countries, particularly, in Europe and the United States, the shortage occurs partly due to increasing demand for nurses complicated by undersupply. Increasing demand for nursing services is related to the ageing popula

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