The Global Nursing Shortage Causative Factors

It’s no secret that there is a global nursing shortage. That shortage is being felt around the world and is adversely impacting healthcare in multiple areas. The International Council of  Nurses undertook a major initiative about 10 years ago that brought some good information to light regarding the nursing shortage as well as some solutions to it. Many of these solutions were implemented and some worked, but the issue is that new problems have arisen that are propelling the nursing shortage well into this century.

It is projected that by 2020 the nursing shortage will be even more critical than it is now. Many baby boomer nurses are retiring and others are turning to secondary careers when they find nursing no longer suits them. They are leaving the field well prior to having given any of their experience and knowledge to the nursing students just coming on.

Add to that the fact that nursing faculty is also in short supply. In  2016, more than 40 thousand nursing students were turned away from universities because not enough teachers were available to allow them entry. Each university keeps only so many students in their roster and turns away several hundred per year.

• Policy
• Health Sector Funding
• Workforce and planning
• Practice environment
• Job satisfaction
• Training assistance
• Nursing leadership

As regards how to fix it, multiple proposals have been made with some making headway in the correction of the nursing shortage.

Increasing and improving nursing faculty is just one recommendation for helping to mitigate the nursing shortage. One way to do that by taking advantage of the baby boomers who wish to retire from hands-on nursing and to bring them to transition to nursing faculty to enable more nursing students to be graduated.

Further, transformational leadership and greater autonomy tends to create a more satisfied nursing staff and compel them to stay in the field much longer. Getting more engaged and more satisfied nursing staff leaders to retention and lower turnover. That is another method of defeating the nursing shortage for individual facilities.

What methods have you used in your nursing facility to promote staff engagement and retention? When you need home health nursing staff, Proactive Healthcare Recruiters can help. Call today and schedule a ten-minute interview to find out what we have to offer you.