Historical Background of the Problem
It is important to note that the problem of nurses being cut has been going on for a long time. Over the past ten years, the medical industry has faced a medical personnel shortage. Although the first cases of nurses’ redundancy appeared during World War II, the US government increased funding for medicine. As a result, in the 1950s, it was possible to attract the required number of people to nursing (Marć et al., 2019).
The challenge arose again in the 1960s due to the lack of educational institutions to train professional nurses. Additional funding was also raised to build nursing schools to address the crisis. After salaries were raised and the number of academic institutions increased, the problem of staff shortages did not arise until 2010 (Marć et al., 2019). That was the first time the National Health Department published a report pointing to the need for more nurses.
The issue reached its peak during the COVID-19 outbreak when medical staff worked overtime, and many nurses contracted COVID-19 due to exposure to the disease. Accordingly, this exacerbated all states’ already existing healthcare shortage (Gilbert, 2023). Thus, after the decline in the incidence of coronavirus disease, its solution was one of the tasks at the national level. There is a severe shortage of nurses in the job market in the United States today.
Since nurses comprise the largest provider group in the country, this shortage is exposing many hospitals, colleges, and other organizations to a staffing crisis. The staffing crisis caused hospitals to spend about a billion dollars on hiring and retaining employees in 2017 (Marć et al., 2019). They were forced to take this step to avoid endangering patients and reducing the number of patient beds in the facility.
In addition, many clinics have had to turn to temporary nurses to address staffing shortages. Total nursing costs in the United States nearly doubled over the past three years to $4.8 billion (Gilbert, 2023, p. 70). Hospitals are also forced to use foreign nurses from the Philippines, Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica, and Nigeria. Similarly, by 2024, there will be more than a million nursing vacancies (Gilbert, 2023, p. 71). The cause of the crisis is the aging baby boomer generation, which greatly increases the number of patients seeking nursing care and a new wave of nurse retirements. Consequently, forecasts for the next year indicate that the problem must be solved before it becomes more complicated.
Proposed Solution to the Problem
Nevertheless, there is a shortage of nurses in all states, so attempts have been made to expand this problem. The Stop Nurse Shortages Act by Haley Stevens and David Joyce was proposed and developed at the legislative level to address the issue. The main goal of this law is to provide a $10 million grant program to support institutions that train nurses (Gilbert, 2023, p. 73). Accordingly, the funding will attract more specialists to teach them, enabling nurses to receive their diplomas faster. Moreover, at the level of my organization, the management changed its strategic planning to address the nursing shortage. The strategic plan included improved funding for nurses’ salaries but was not implemented due to insufficient cost.
My organization is again engaged in strategic planning, and the issue of nursing staff reduction is on the agenda. This time, the problem involved not only hospital staff and management but also private investors who decided to provide financial support (Wadsworth et al., 2016). Thus, considering investors’ capabilities and available labor resources, a plan has been developed to gradually attract nurses by offering higher salaries and additional training. It is crucial to note that the project requires significant financial costs, but private investors have agreed to cover them for the project’s successful realization.
References
Gilbert, J. H. (2023). Investment in Social Capital to Mitigate Nursing Shortages Post-Pandemic. Nurse Leader, 21(1), 69-74. Web.
Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2019). A nursing shortage–a prospect of global and local policies. International Nursing Review, 66(1), 9-16. Web.
Wadsworth, B., Felton, F., & Linus, R. (2016). SOARing into strategic planning. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 40(4), 299-306. Web.