Contemporary Issues

Contemporary Issues

This paper will discuss a contemporary health issue and its potential impact on the nursing profession. As the nursing profession continues to grow, society has begun to see a decrease in the number of nurses in the profession. According to NursingWorld (2005) "The nation's hospitals have 126,000 vacancies for nursing professions. In addition, 75 percent of all hospitals vacancies are for nurses." Currently Registered Nurses are at the top of the list of occupations with projected job growth. So why are so many nurses leaving the profession resulting in a shortage? Is America truly experiencing a nursing shortage or are nurses just better educated, resulting in additional responsibilities?

Today most nursing programs only allow a very limited number of students to enroll in nursing programs. Many qualified applicants are being rejected for admission-based on multiple factors. These facilities lack funding to train nurses and they also lack the staff and facilities to train students. A Dec. 15, 2004, National League of Nursing (NLN) study "confirmed that an estimated 125,000 nursing school applicants per year are turned away from nursing education programs at all levels, resulting from a critical shortage of nursing school faculty." Thus, the output of trained nurse's is falling short to demand.

Nurses also continue to experience burnout in their jobs. Since many facilities experience a shortage of qualified staff, they are requiring nurses to work more hours and take care of an increase patient load. Facilities are also lacking benefits such as adequate sick leave, retirement, and insurance. Therefore, nurses are experiencing feelings of health and patient safety concerns. As nurses continue to encounter deterioration in work conditions, they are less likely to continue in their present jobs and consider early retirement. Nurses are not recommending their family and friends to receive care at particular organizations and they are also discouraging others from entering into the profession. With the increasing scrutiny of the profession we are setting ourselves up for failure in our own jobs.

As a result of the nursing shortage, facilities have seen an increase number of deaths, injuries and medication errors. Nurses (2002) states, "The odds of patient mortality increase by about 7% for every additional patient in the average nurse's workload." This is just one example of the impact nurses have on patient healthcare. This also demonstrates the very negative impact the nursing shortage is having on our patient care. An increased number of staff could significantly reduce these types of errors. Nurses experience and increased patient load and have to budget his or her time to provide care. Many have to rush and at the end of their shift they often feel as though they needed to spend more time with their patient involving direct care or patient education.

In July 2002 the Nurse Reinvestment Act was passed by Congress and signed by President George Bush on August 1, 2002. This act will provide nursing students will billions of extra dollars to use for their education. The Nurse Reinvestment Act will also provide grants, scholarships and loan repayment plans for any student who chooses to take advantage of the program. According to the American Nurses Association (March 2005), this law "establishes scholarships, loan repayments, public service announcements, retention grants, career ladders, geriatric training grants, and loan cancellation for nursing faculty." Not only will this act encourage new nurses to enter the force but the Reinvestment Act will also encourage current nurse's to continue in their education and provide better quality of care. The act will also expand eligibility for the nursing loan repayment plan. The Nurse Reinvestment Act allows for scholarships to be made available to qualifying students in exchange for their work in designated facilities that are experiencing shortage. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (2002) also has a series of grants totaling approximately $33 million dollars to include:

Ð'* 324 Advanced Education Nursing Traineeship grants, totaling more than $18.5 million, which support registered nurses in graduate programs who are studying to become nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse-midwives, nurse anesthetists, nurse educators, nurse administrators and public health nurses. A list of grantees is available at bhpr.hrsa.gov/grants2002/awards02/nrsaetraward.htm.