Introduction
The global workforce of nurses faces a wide range of issues and tendencies in the contemporary world. Some of the most prominent trends in global nursing are the high rates of the nursing shortage and turnover, the expanding roles of nursing practitioners, and the issues of education and migration of nurses worldwide. Today, many professionals are involved in the development of strategies that would help to prevent or minimize the rate of the modern problems related to the nursing workforce; however, they seem to be interconnected as the shortage of skilled nurses drives the pressure on the remaining practitioners up, creating the excessive strain on the field as a career and driving the potential new human resources away from this profession; as a result, the vacant positions of nurses have to be filled by low-skilled professionals with weaker skills and knowledge or by nurses coming from abroad and receiving education in other countries (ICN/FNIF, 2006). In that way, the entire set of factors seems to have one root cause in common – the shortage of skilled nurses.
Issue
The modern global workforce of nurses is facing several complex problems that are boosted by multiple tendencies and phenomena. In particular, the process of globalization is one of the major influences on the global nursing workforce. To be more precise, among all the industries and career fields, nursing has experienced one of the most dramatic human resource migration trends (Nichols, Davis, & Richardson, 2010). The shortage of nursing professionals in the USA and the other developed countries tend to produce a strong impact on the shortage worldwide because facing the lack of practitioners, these states begin to employ the international recruitment strategies; specifically, over 12% of the nurses licensed in the US in 2007 were foreign-educated (Pittman, 2013).
One of the factors driving the nursing shortage globally is the aging of the workforce. In particular, the average age of nurses in the United States today is 47 years with one-third of the workforce aged between 50 and 64 (Sherman, Chiang-Hanisko, & Koszalinski, 2013). Under these circumstances, it is projected that the shortage of nurses in the US will equal as many as 250 000 practitioners by 2015 (Sherman et al., 2013).
Just like many other career fields today, nursing experiences the increase in the scope of practice, which means that the roles of the modern nurses change and expand compared to those the used to dominate the field a few decades ago (Maier & Aiken, 2016). This factor is recognized as both – a strain on the nurses practicing currently and a feature attracting new entrants into the career field (Maier & Aiken, 2016).
The rationale for the Choice of Issue
This issue was chosen for the report and a review due to its high level of importance and complex nature that ties it to a wide variety of many essential issues for the contemporary nurses. Also, the issues of the global nursing workforce (especially the ones that contribute to the development of such problems as the shortage of nursing staff and nurse turnover) often lead to the decrease in the quality of the provided healthcare services, as well as an insufficient nurse-to-patient ratio that eventually may result in the higher chances of negative patient outcomes as the growing risks for the patients (ICN/FNIF, 2006; Pittman, 2013; Whelan, 2014).
Moreover, many of the existing global nursing workforce issues are interconnected and tend to produce a significant strain on the career field and also hurt the related professions and spheres since the shortage, turnover, or a high level of job dissatisfaction among nursing practitioners adds to the pressure put on the medical professionals and clinicians working alongside nurses and having interrelated tasks and responsibilities (Sherman et al., 2013; Whelan, 2014). Finally, the solutions for the issues experienced by the global workforce of nurses will alleviate some of the burdens currently carried by these practitioners and may help the career field become more popular and attract a larger number of entrants thus improving nurse-to-patient ratio and producing a positive impact on the quality of the services provided by the contemporary medical facilities on the global scale.
Materials
When it comes to the nursing workforce problem related to the shortage of professionals, there exist multiple creative approaches that are employed by the medical facilities that face the insufficient nurse-to-patient ratio. The problems of a global nature such as the nursing shortage and turnover, as well as the other issues impacting the human resources in this career field, have been known to the leaders of the field for a long time. Multiple professionals are involved in the creation and development of various solutions to these issues worldwide.
The solutions targeted by the political leaders and organizations are often directed at the prevention and minimization of the problems on a long-term basis. Such strategies usually take a long time to produce noticeable results. However, the hospitals experiencing a shortage of nurses require immediate solutions and successful strategies that could make a difference as soon as possible. This tendency is easy to understand because most cases dealt with by nurses cannot wait for the hospitals to hire a sufficient number of professionals to cover all the patients. Practically, the problem of the nursing shortage has a direct impact on the lives of patients daily and thus has to be addressed using all means available.
In that way, there exists a substantial body of materials published specifically for the practitioners employed at the medical facilities facing the workforce problems such as nursing shortage. The major purpose of such materials is to provide the workplaces with sets of practical and efficient solutions for their issues and thus enabling them to deliver the services of a higher quality regardless of their challenges.
In particular, Ball, Doyle, and Oocuma (2015) presented an overview of the solutions and strategies aiming at the reduction of the nursing shortage in the OR; the detailed description of the solution offered by the authors allows for it to be replicated in different educational organizations to become able to prepare more nursing students to operate as the OR nurses, speed up their training, and thus address the shortage of the aforementioned practitioners.
Also, the policy statement made by the members of Tri-Council (AACN, ANA, AONE, and NLN) describes the problem of shortage in detail and offers a set of potential solutions that could be used by the modern nursing leaders worldwide to initiate changes in their cities, areas, and countries (ANA, 2017).
Moreover, HCPro (2004) offered another interesting overview of practical solutions used in different medical facilities aiming to minimize their nursing workforce problems. Even though this material is not as current as of the previous two, it offers practical strategies employed and invented by actual medical professionals. This resource could serve as an inspiration for the leaders of medical facilities struggling to handle their nursing workforce problems.
Practice and Clinical Setting
Traditionally, the major method employed to attract more people into the profession was the raise in salaries (Whelan, 2014). However, since the shortage is caused not only by the shortage of practitioners but also by the growth in demand (due to a larger number of patients), the newer strategies of coping with the issues in the global nursing workforce were based on the changes in education and training of the practitioners (Whelan, 2014). In addition to these methods, the strategy driven by the tendency foraging in the workforce should also involve the retention of the existing nurses (Sherman et al., 2013).
As mentioned previously, in the clinical setting, the aforementioned materials, as well as many other creative approaches and solutions to nursing workforce problems are applied by the exact needs and issues faced by each particular facility. Since the issues related to the nursing workforce are multiple and may be related to the shortage of staff, the insufficiency of skills and education, turnover, excessive workloads, and inappropriate allocation of resources, to name a few, the solutions need to vary depending on what goals are pursued by an organization. There exist many studies and EBPs focused on each of the specific problems and the solutions used in different organizations.
Lobbying
For the lobbying regarding the issues of the nursing workforce to be successful, the statement or policy proposition has to be based on thorough research with a substantial body of evidence concerning the prevalence of the selected problem, as well as the practical consequences of the existing issues. In this particular case, the evidence would have to cover the rates of nursing shortage in the US, and the strain it produces on the remaining nurses (long shifts, insufficient ration of nurses and patients, turnover, the inflow of low-skilled nurses); also, the statement would have to describe the consequences of the shortage. Also, since many facilities tend to find their solutions to the workforce problems that work on a short-term basis, I would focus the lobbying on long-term solutions such as education and training for the new nurses and the retention strategies for the aging staff to prevent it from leaving and increasing the gap in nurse-to-patient ratio.
Practically, the two parts of the solution would help address two aspects of the workforce problem at the same time and reduce two influential and significant factors that contribute to the increase in the shortage of the nursing staff. The latter tendency, in turn, leads to a higher rate of negative patient outcomes, a higher level of stress for the existing nursing professionals, and the establishment of the generally negative reputation of the nursing professions as the ones with unfair workloads and a lot of pressure. Finally, to obtain the financial support helping to address the issue, it would be necessary to provide information as to the financial waste and losses resulting from the shortage of nursing practitioners.
References
ANA. (2017). Strategies to reverse the new nursing shortage.
Ball, K., Doyle, D., & Oocuma, N. I. (2015). Nursing shortages in the OR: Solutions for new models of education. AORN Journal, 101(1), 115–136.
HCPro. (2004). Strategies for Nurse Managers. HCPro, 4(3), 1-12.
ICN/FNIF. (2006). The global nursing shortage: Priority areas for intervention.
Maier, C. B. & Aiken, L. H. (2016). Expanding clinical roles for nurses to realign the global health workforce with population needs: A commentary. Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, 5(21), 1-4.
Nichols, B. L., Davis, C. R., & Richardson, D. R. (2010). An integrative review of global nursing workforce issues. Annual Review of Nursing Research, 28, 113-132.
Pittman, P. (2013). Nursing workforce education, migration and the quality of health care: a global challenge. International Journal for Quality in Healthcare, 25(4), 349-351.
Sherman, R. O., Chiang-Hanisko, L., & Koszalinski, R. (2013). The ageing nursing workforce: A global challenge. Journal of Nursing Management, 21, 899-902.
Whelan, J. (2014). “Where did all the nurses go?”: Mid-twentieth century nurse shortages, causes, solutions, and continuing problems.