The Nursing Shortage

How does this topic affect the general population? Health care in general?
The nursing profession historically and to this day has been comprised of mostly women. Male nurses make up only 5.89% of the nursing workforce in Ontario. This poses a problem as females are now becoming more and more attracted to non-traditional professions such as engineering, medicine, law, accounting, and business (Booth, 2002). As a result of this change, the nursing profession is losing its main source of new recruits. Initiatives have not been made sufficient enough to attract the other 50% of the population. Another cause of the shortage is also related to gender, the stereotyping of nurses is causing potential nurses to shy away from the profession. A new

The nursing shortage deprives the health care with the adequate tool of quality and the cost effectiveness. The current shortage in the nursing has opened up the hospitals to reduce in the patient care that strictly happens when staffing levels are low. The nursing shortage has a direct effect on both the nurses themselves as well as the clients whom they serve. Even though there are fewer nurses, there is the same amount of work that needs to be accomplished, if not more. This puts an excess amount of stress on the remaining working nurses who struggle to maintain efficiency of the health care system and provide adequate care for their clients. The increase demands, and stress levels that coincide with them, lead to the high levels of burnout in nurses. Burnout is composed of both physical and emotional exhaustion caused by stress (Beck, 1995, p. 22). When experiencing burnout, nurses feel physically and emotionally fatigued and lose concentration and motivation for towards their work and overall performance (Beck, 1995, p. 21). Burnout directly affects the nurses’ job satisfaction (Erikson & Grove, 2008, p. 2), which in turn affects their competency. When a nurse's competency is compromised, there is a potential for causing their client harm. Therefore, the nursing profession is

Researches has also indicated that hospital acquired infection, bedsore, patient fall, wrong drug dozes, prolonged hospital stay and other preventable can increase in a situation of decreased nurse staffing levels.
Failure to address nursing shortage has therefore resulted into failure to reduce the rates of adverse outcomes or complications, failure to reduce hospital costs as well as significant financial as well as psychological costs to patients and their families. James Buchan and Ian Seccombe (1995) noted that the main issues for management arising from nurse shortage and absence are impact on quality of care, continuity of care, its productivity, effects on remaining staff with over work.
Muliira. J. K,. The Nation Wide Nursing Shortage in USA, Retrieved from