Impacts of Nursing Shortage Health, Medicine, Nursing Essay (Essay Sample)

Impacts of Nursing Shortage
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Impacts of Nursing Shortage
The shortage of nurses in the US impacts the quality of patient care and healthcare delivery services. The shortage is expected to continue as baby boomers age, few students enroll in nursing programs, and the current nurses approach retirement age. Due to nursing shortage, nurses work in stressful conditions that can result to job dissatisfaction, rejection of patients from hospitals, need to further education, and increased medical errors.
The nursing shortage is a significant issue because it affects the healthcare delivery system. Many risks have been associated with the shortage of nurses in U.S hospitals. First, the working nurses may be stressed out due to heavy workloads and are more likely to make medical errors (Muabbar & Alsharqi, 2021). Secondly, the staff in the workforce may find themselves in high demand. Unmanaged workloads that are mentally and physically exhausting may increase job dissatisfaction (Nabizadeh-Gharghozar et al., 2020). Also, the demand for specialized nurses may increase as hospital care is reserved for terminally ill patients. The currently employed nurses may need more training and education to compete with the freshly trained nurses (Halpin et al., 2017). Furthermore, the nursing shortage may impact healthcare facilities and hospitals, because they require patients to stay in business and make money. Prolonged and constant understaffing may undermine the business's success, especially when issues, such as understaffing results in patient care mistakes and medical errors (Spence et al., 2018). Therefore, the nursing shortage may affect almost all aspects of healthcare delivery.