Nursing Shortage and Nursing Turnover Writing Assignment (Essay Sample)

Nursing Shortage and Nursing Turnover
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The deficit of nurses in the United States is growing at an alarming rate. It is affecting adequate patient care in the health care system. It has become a threat to most hospitals’ ability, long term care facilities and timely access to quality care. The shortage has led to unfavorable effects which include: decreased job satisfaction, burnout of nurses due to overworking and increased rate of turnover. The shortage has been attributed to the aging nurse population popularly known as baby boomer population, the rising incidence of chronic illnesses, aging workforce, limited capacity of nursing schools to train more nurses, lack of national licensure of nurses among others. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.2 million vacancies will emerge between 2014 and 2022 (Grant, 2016).
As the prospect of the shortage is becoming alarming, health care organizations are depending on the nurse leaders and managers to reverse these trend as it has a significant effect on the patient outcome. It has reduced the quality of patient care, increased accidents among patients, increased cases of patient readmission, absenteeism rates, and high patient mortality. Nursing leaders are mainly focusing on empowering, motivating, and keeping the team inspired both within the organization and outside while managers are the sole decision makers in an organization (Grant, 2016).
Nursing turnover has been significantly linked to increased workload, lack of role clarity, poor leadership style, non-recognition for good performance, poor communication from leaders and managers, lack of career opportunities and advancement, inflexibility of the schedule and lack of teamwork (Hunts, 2009). Leaders and managers can reduce these by increasing educational and community outreach programs, providing reimbursement to help existing employees to obtain degrees, increase compensation and benefits support flexible schedules, sharing of jobs (Hunts,2009). Retaining of nurses can be achieved through allowing them to practice the full scope of their licenses through lobbying for the change of state guidelines and loan forgiveness for the nurses who lecture in their state after graduation from nursing school. These moves will enhance its provision of health services.
Both managers and leaders are responsible for hiring nurse applicants and maintaining the stuff. They should encourage them, inspire the staff education efforts through like tuition reimbursement, making sure that nurses access education and training opportunities thus enabling recruitment and selection of high-quality staff and mentoring professional development among the nurses (Huber, 2010). Managers play a critical role in retaining the nurses. Leaders demonstrate integrity, honesty, and optimism. Research has shown that many nurses have left their jobs due to dissatisfaction with their managers. System theory can be applied by nurse managers to allow them to make appropriate changes to provide a healthy working environment for nurses as well as retain the skilled nurses.
Besides, both managers and leaders in the health care system can lobby for an increased budget from the government to train more nurses as many members are approaching retirement. It can be achieved by collaboration between the leadership and management to provide clinical places, classrooms, clinical receptors and hospitals where nurses can gain experience. These will increase the number of trained nurses in the country and therefore help to curb the shortage that has been on the rise. Private-public partnership will ensure more nurses are trained. Both leaders and managers can also persuade the leadership of the various states to allow employment of foreign nurses (Grant, 2016).
Nursing leadership should use the trait theory composed of six skills such as passion, vision, trust, integrity, daring and curiosity. Attitudinal leadership theory helps the leaders to maintain a better relationship with the managers and with the staff (Huber, 2010). The nurse managers have to be approachable and supportive to the staff because it is stressful to work in an unwelcoming environment, therefore, reducing the increasing nurse turnover.
Increasing the supply of nurses to overcome the shortage is important. Nurse leaders and managers can enhance the number of students being recruited to nursing schools by organizing community outreach programs. These will create interest among the younger generation towards nursing programs. The programs will also raise public awareness about nursing being a better profession, and more so they will have more knowledge about it. They can also offer them scholarships for the students in the community to study therefore increasing the nursing workforce. (Grant, 2016).
Managers are the active critical management of human resources. They impact the organization’s performance through their influence on employee’s performance related attitude and behavior by pushing for greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Therefore, they try to maintain the elder workforce that has more experience compared to recruiting new nurses who have inexperience. Some lobby for closure of beds based on the number of available nurses for each shift for patient’s safety and standards of practice. Nursing leaders, on the other hand, are concerned with advocating for more nurses to be employed so that they can gain experience and avoid overworking of the available nurses. They will also maintain the quality of care, reduce the incidence of error, rates of readmission, and patient mortality.
To effectively deal with the high level of shortage and turnover of nurses, managers are providing them with relocation coverage, bonuses, and incentives to relocate. Other managers are offering them meaningful feedback and recognition. Leaders on the other had fight for the rights of nurses by providing support and direction to the nurses. Excellent communication, recognition, and autonomy if implemented can help retain the nurses ( Staiger, Auerbach, & Buerhaus, 2012).
Social identity theory is essential for good nursing leadership. Leaders should ensure that the nurses are valued and have emotional attachment to the group they are leading. Each member deserves recognition and support from the leaders. Fighting for better working conditions better management, freedom to relocate from one state to another giving them equal opportunities and treating the group's goals and interests will make the members feel conn...