International Nursing Shortage example essay topic

Who will take care of us? Ok, raise your hand, how many of you have thought about a career in the healthcare industry? This could include anything from being a doctor to a sales representative for a major pharmaceutical company. Ok, that's what I expected from a class of this size. Now, how many of you already have or think you will visit the hospital in the next five years.

Now, I know this question may seem out of the blue, but here's why I'm asking. Currently, the international nursing shortage is the worst it's been in the history of nursing. You might ask, ok what does this have to do with me if I don't EVER want to be a nurse. Well that's the thing. Everything. You " ll realize there's a nursing shortage when you " re sitting in the ER for four hours, or you " re waiting in a doctor's office for your seasonal flu shot, but now you " re running late for work, just because there are simply not enough nurses to go around.

The A ACN President Connie Barden, estimates a 400,000-nurse deficit in the U.S. by the year 2020. On another note, the general public should be aware of the shortage because of the dangers it puts patients in everyday. In 2001 Linda Campi of the Chicago Tribune conducted an investigation that revealed since 1995, more than 1,700 patients deaths could be attributed to mistakes made by nurses (cnn. com). Recently, J.D. Burlington took it a step further and said that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations reported that 24 percent of patient errors resulting in critical injuries and death were related to inadequate staffing of nurses.

The international nursing shortage is very real and not only to the hospitals that need to fill these positions but obviously, also to the public. Older registered nurses are leaving and retiring and the remaining nurses who are much fewer have to devise the same amount of tasks among themselves causing them to be overworked to the point of unsafe measures. Currently, the ratio of RNs in their forties to RNs in their twenties is 4 to 1 (nursesource. org). The primary cause of this shortage is a combination of an international decrease in enrollment of new nurses into nursing schools as well as the aging of the current working nurse and the aging "baby boomer" generation. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, entry-level BSN enrollment fell 2.1 percent in fall 2000, dropping for the sixth year in a row.

In December 2000, the World Health Organization reported that ten years ago Poland was graduating more than 10,000 nurses annually. That figure has fallen to 3,000. In Chile, out of 18,000 nurses in the country, only 8,000 are working in the field currently (nursesource. org). This decrease in enrollment can be supported by some popular theories. Currently, nursing is not necessarily portrayed as a positive choice because the shortage increases the stress on the nurses that are working, and all the public hears about nursing are the weekend, night, or holiday shifts, or being exposed to contagious elements. These varied and conflicting images result in nursing appearing as an unstable, unpredictable and high-risk career option.

Also, the availability of nursing teachers and faculty in colleges is limited and many colleges are not even offering a nursing degree. Therefore, the acceptance rate is getting lower coinciding with the decreasing offered courses. It is getting harder and harder to get into a nursing school because they are running out of nurses to teach the courses, which in turn negatively influences the interest for prospective students. An additional primary cause of the nursing shortage is the aging of the current registered nurse.

The Toronto Star reported in June of 2001 that Ontario, Canada, expects to lose 14,000 of its 81,000 nurses due to retirement by 2004 (nursesource. org). Without the new nursing graduates, there are fewer nurses available to replace those who retire or leave for other opportunities. Approximately one third of the nursing workforce in the U.S. is over 50 yeas of age and the average full-time nurse is 49 years old. The bureau of Labor Statistics reports that jobs for RNs will grow 23 percent by 2008 which is faster than the average for all other occupations combined. (nursesource. org). More nurses are retiring than can be replaced just as jobs in the healthcare industry are dramatically expanding. Then, there is the inevitable fact that the baby boomer generation is aging fast and there are not going to be enough nurses to provide medical care for all of them.

"For more than 50 years, demographers have known that America would be experiencing a rather large "bulge" in the U.S. born population created by the deferral of childbearing during World War II (aoa. gov)."Baby boomers" are the people that were born between the years of about 1945 to 1965. Demographers and the media have labeled them with this title and they have the attention of the entire medical community to their ever-growing medical needs. In July, the Kansas City Star newspaper reported an estimated 78 million people are approaching the age where they will need more care. However, if the trend continues as it has been with the nursing shortage, then who will take care of them?

This nursing shortage is international so the U.S. can not entice other nurses to come work here. Just this month, Nigel Gould of the Belfast Telegraph reported that nearly 2,000 nurses have left Northern Ireland in the past two years. Gould says that this is due to Ireland not paying nurses enough, but after leaving Ireland, the U.S. has not seen an increase in nurses arriving here. Any nurses that are working today are just being spread around, their numbers are not increasing. The best way to deal with the aging baby boomers is to have enough nursing staff to properly and safely handle them but because this shortage is not limited to the United States there are simply none available. Other reasons for this shortage include nurses, especially female, want to be active both at home and at work; they do not want to choose between the two.

Also, for the first time more prestigious and more paying careers have opened to women in the past twenty years, so fewer and fewer women are choosing nursing as a career. As with other predominately female occupations, nursing tends to be underrated, still carrying the image that all nurses do is "slave away" for other people. Basing their assumptions on this notion, mothers tend to discourage their children from looking at nursing as a career. Obviously, these negative connotations on the profession have not had a positive effect on improving the shortage. The entire shortage is a bad cycle because the nurses that are entering the work force now are getting easily discouraged because of the long hours and stressful conditions due to a lack of staffing. Then they leave and we are right back where we started; the world still needs nurses.

The international nursing shortage does not only affect the hospitals and other staffing agencies that use nurses. This profession relies on the public, if people did not need to be taken care of then there would be no need for nurses. However, there will always be sick people and the demand for nurses will be ever present. In the future, both of these are increasing because there is a decrease in enrollment in nursing schools, and the current working nurse and projected 78 million 'baby boomers' are aging fast... So as we get older and all of us will eventually need medical attention more than once in our lives, I hope, as does the rest of the healthcare community, that we will not have to ask "Who will take care of us?".