There is expected to be a change in the number of nurses working in hospitals. The reasoning to this is patients are being discharged earlier and more procedures are being done on an outpatient basis, both inside and outside of hospitals. “Some employers report difficulty in attracting and retaining an adequate number of RNs”( “Registered Nurses”). The RN workforce is slowly aging and there continues to be a lack of younger workers to fill these positions. As of right now there are more than 100,000 vacant positions for RNs.
Several of those issues began in the 1990s when changes in the health care system were implemented. Due to conflicts in funding, hospital staffs were greatly reduced. When facilities required more nurses such as times when there was an unexpected increase in patient admission, instead of hiring additional staff, mandatory overtime was used (Keenan, 2003). At the height of their need, the amount of practicing nurses has declined. With baby boomers reaching retirement age they will need health care services which only increases the demand for nurses.
Also, some adults do not end up getting married, almost 19 million Americans (Benokraitis, n.d., 3). Furthermore, children under the age of 18 living with two married parents went from 77 percent to 67 percent (Benokraitis, n.d, 3). That finding shows the increase of divorce among Americans. The article, “The Changing Landscape of Family”, states that women are spending less time with their children than before and there is a decrease in the number of children per family. This is partially because women have started to go back to work and the economy in the present day is not very stable so supporting a bigger family is not easily done.
Chronic diseases wellness progams are necessary for the elderly and will become needed more as the aging population grows. It is believed that disease management programs for the elderly reduce heathcare expenditures, but it still remains inconlusive (Simone R. de Bruin, 2011). Until the healthcare industry can provide a way to cut costs in healthcare the ability to lower costs for the elderly will continue to rise and affect healthcare nation wide. The individual patient, the community, and society as a whole can address these challenges by doing his/herr research. One way to help bring about the necessary changes in our healthcare is talk to people in charge of helping bring about change in the healthcare world such as one’e own congressmen or congressworman.
Many insurance plans cover only a limited number of doctors’ visits or hospital days, exposing families’ to unlimited financial liability. Over half of all personal bankruptcies today are caused by medical bills. Lack of affordable health care is compounded by serious flaws in our health care delivery system. About 100,000 Americans die from medical errors in hospitals every year. One-quarter of all medical spending goes to administrative and overhead costs, and reliance on antiquated paper-based record and information systems needlessly increases these costs.
One primary factor is the population growth patterns. Currently the American population is growing older, which means there is both a growing need for nurses as well as the implication that the workforce of nurses is also growing in age, roughly half of the nurses being 50 years or older. In most professions the reason for shortage is more directly related a lack of qualified applicants to the profession, in the case of nursing it is more directly related to the colleges and universities cannot meet demands of an increased enrollment. The inability to increase the enrollment is secondary to a lack of resources to both teach courses as well as issues related to student saturation at clinical sites (Fox & Abrahamson, 2009). A third contributing factor is very interrelated to nursing education is that nursing education has shifted from hospital-based diploma programs to university and college programs.
But by 1983, two changes affected the nursing field. As I mentioned already, hospitals began hiring more BSN grads. The Diploma Grad was still very highly trained and excellent, but the powers in charge believed BSNs could deliver a better quality of care, especially in the written areas-- charting, care plans, research. The 2nd change that hit new grads in 1982-1983 was the failure of the country's steel mills, coal mines, and other labor industries like glass mills, especially in the northeastern states. Husbands were now unemployed and many of the RN-wives who had previously stayed home as housewives and mothers returned to the nursing field.
A Comparison of the Professional Roles of Nurses In this paper, the nurse’s unique role in providing inter-professional care, patient care quality and safety, cost effective healthcare, and care to diverse patient populations will be investigated. A Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA), J.W. and a Nurse Educator, M.,H., were interviewed, their roles as nurses were analyzed using provided protocol to discuss the difference between research and quality improvement, also how informatics affect the quality of patient care. The two specialties based on the individual interviews will be compared and a copy of both interviews will be incorporated into the paper. Lastly, a reflection of findings will be discussed as to how nurses could contribute the information from the two interviews into their own professional growth and development.
When an employee is bombarded with too many patients under their care, it causes stress to the employee, and as an effect they lose concern for the patient. Many geriatric care facilities are under staffed, and the pay rate is very low compared to other health care professions. Nurse’s aides have a very high job turnover rate which leads to lack of bonding with their patient, and the patient receiving a new caregiver every few months, which will cause confusion to both the patient and the employee. Inadequate staffing is a huge factor and problem in nursing homes. According to the U.S. House of Representatives, majority of nursing homes do not have enough staff to meet the levels recommended by federal officials; the levels recommended are 3.45 nursing hours per patient daily.
Gender-bias in Nursing Education: Some Factors Affecting Student Recruitment and Retention Arthur W. Keating Dynamics of Professional Nursing Winston Salem State University The U.S. is currently facing a shortage of trained nurses. The AACN factsheet (Rosseter, 2012) references a number of indicators which predict the current nursing shortage will continue to grow at least through the year 2020. This reflects continued job growth in nursing sector as well as the need for replacements for nurses planning to retire. This is exasperated by the shortage of nursing faculty restricting nursing school enrollment. With all factors considered the total deficit could reach one million nurses by 2020.