Nursing Shortage Case Study

In view of a national nursing shortage and nursing education not keeping pace with workforce demands, how would you ensure an adequate supply of nurses in your organization?

In the healthcare care field nurses are a key player, if you will, in the care of patients. As the reading this week states there is really no place in the healthcare industry that nurses have not made some sort of contribution too. “Nurses are critical to impatient care; usually relevant to outpatient care; central to palliative, hospice, home, and long-term institutional care; and important to disease prevention” (White & Griffith 2010, p. 221). Nurses are key participants in the interdisciplinary care team that develops and executes patient care plans, patient management

Nurses are a critical focal point in high-performing HCOs. It would seem that more emphasis should be placed on recruiting and retaining the nurses they have. What is causing the nursing shortage? There are many factors in the nursing shortage. One, women have more choices in careers than in times past. But there are some “key differentiators from the previous two shortages” such as “the aging of nurses, the general workforce shortages in ancillary professions and support labor, and the global nature of this shortage” (Nevidjon & Erikson). When looking at the nursing shortage, management has two critical areas they need to be concerned with. One if to find ways to keep nursing appealing to young people entering college and two, to find ways to get nurses to continue in the nursing profession. Another area to look at is how can they improve the effectiveness of nurses by using a clinical team concept? The reading this week talks about how Magnet hospitals, for instance, generally do not have nursing shortages because they recruit, develop, support and reward their nursing staff at all levels and do so in ways that makes the nurses work more satisfying. They also continuously are looking for those work elements

The average age of nurses in HCOs is somewhere around 49-50. HCO’s need to find ways to get younger nurses into the workforce and one way that could motivate a young nurse is money. Offering sign on bonuses is a good way to get a young nurses attention. But this will only work for the short term. For long-term I think looking at ways to redesign the patient care delivery models to support the older practicing work force is one key element. Using older nurses as educators within the HCO is a good idea as they can teach the younger nurses things they cannot learn in a classroom setting. Another thing to look at is the physical demands of nursing. Nursing is not only mentally demanding but physically demanding as well. HCOs need to find ways to implement new technology to ease the physical burden on their