Influences On Nursing

Societal Influences on Professional Nursing The nursing profession is an evolving field of work that shows no signs of stopping. With advancements in technology and education, the nursing profession must change in order to keep up with the reset of society. There are many changing societal factors that are influencing nursing as the year progress. As mentioned before, an increase of technology use is a major influence on nursing, the introduction of evidence-based practice in the professional field and in the educational environment play a role in a nurse’s everyday life. Also, there are the changes in society itself that benefit the nursing profession. For example, the breaking of stereotypical gender roles in society results in male nurses

A nurse must be able to perform activities like moving a patient, lifting heavy equipment, being on their feet for much of their shift, etc. The nursing profession can be very taxing on a person’s body and society as a whole is seeing the effects of this. Older nurses who have been in the field for a long time are no longer able to perform these tasks and it is causing them to change their area of expertise, or even leave their profession entirely. This has negatively impacted effective healthcare delivery and proper patient-centered care because these nurses are not able to effectively help their patients. Research shows that there is a large amount of nurses that are near or at the retirement age. This could lead to a dramatic decrease in nurses and possibly a nurse shortage. However, even though there is a large amount of older nurses presently in the field, there is a growing number of young nurses. This creates and intergenerational team of young and old nurses that could be very beneficial to hospitals. The older nurses would be able to pass down their knowledge and tips to the young nurses, allowing them to obtain years of knowledge/experiences just by learning from the older nurses. Although this may be a positive, there is worry that not enough young students/nurses will enter the field and create a shortage. Savor discusses this prediction saying, “As the demand for healthcare keeps growing, we’re going to need Nurse Practitioners (NPs) in huge numbers” (2017). An increase in the need for NP could lead to a decrease in registered nurse. This is due to either a registered nurse continuing with their education to become a NP or less people entering nursing school because they are worried that their will be no jobs for a registered