Nursing Shortage in the Long-Term Care Industry Term Paper

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Staffing Problems in the Nursing Field

Within the U.S., nursing represents the largest health care profession. With 2.7 million nurses currently fulfilling roles within the profession there remains a widespread need for nurses to enter the career in order to replace the aging nurse population, and prepare for increased level of expected medical needs in the future. If left unaddressed, this discrepancy between supply and demand will eventually result in a massive shortage of nurses, and will seriously impact the quality of the U.S. healthcare system. At the same time, a large number of citizens are reaching an age when they will likely be in increasing need of health care services. Thus a continued shortage of qualified nursing professionals will be devastating to the overall quality of the U.S. health care system.

According to information provided by the Bureau of Health Professions (BHP) with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2002), projections show that a shortage of registered nurses, previously projected to begin around 2007, is already. As reported by BHP, the national supply of registered nurses was estimated at 1.9 million while the demand was estimated at 2 million, a shortage of 100,000 or 6%. The demand for nurses is expected to grow relatively slowly until 2010, at which time the demand may exceed an additional 12%. Trends determined by BHP further suggest that demand will begin to exceed supply at an accelerated rate. By 2015 the shortage a relatively modest 6% in the year 2000, could quadruple to 20%. By 2020, as indicated by BHR, if the problem is not resolved, the shortage could reach 29%.

The U.S.

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General Accounting Office (2001) reported similar concerns regarding the aging of the nursing population. As noted by GAO, multiple factors influence recruitment and retention of nurses. One of which is the reduced entry of younger people into the profession. Job dissatisfaction has been identified as an additional factor contributing to the nursing shortage. On the basis of a survey sponsored by the Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (2001), one-half of the currently employed, surveyed RNs have considered leaving the patient-care field for reasons other than retirement.

Overall the nursing shortage is indicative of a number of significant forces, including changing demographics, decreasing resources and increased demands on the health care system. A declining social value placed on nursing as a career, and changes in career opportunities for those how typically would consider nursing as a profession have also affected the number of nursing candidates entering the field. While workforce shortages occur cyclically in other professions, this increasing shortage of nurses appears to be more severe and complex. The results of this trend, if left unchecked, will pose a significant threat to the overall well-being and health of the nation.

In order to investigate this trend, and create a hypothesis as a means for reversing the shortage, I propose to investigate how that creating a mentoring approach to recruit nurses could:

increase the number of nurses applying to nursing programs, improve the a retention rate of nurses entering the field

Increase the level of job satisfaction among nursing professionals which could positively influence the first two goals of this study.

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