Professional Shortage in Nursing, Essay Example

Introduction

The nursing shortage has resulted in many issues that have a detrimental impact on patient care. Of the problems that the nursing shortage greats, this issue that has the negative impact on nursing and nursing practice in the workplace is the fact that nurses are regularly required to participate in mandatory overtime. According to the author of “Nursing shortage: Looking to the future”, there will be negative health consequences due to the nursing shortage in society. Nurses will feel additional stressors as a consequence, which will negatively impact the quality of work that they are able to deliver (Roman 2008). When nurses aren’t required to work overtime, they feel that their management truly cares about them, which increases their want to perform well (Roman 2008). To prevent the negative impacts of overtime, it is therefore necessary to find ways to overcome the nursing shortage. Ways to do so would be to increase nursing school enrollment and hiring staff from abroad (Aiken 2002). It is necessary to implement hospital administration into these initiatives to ensure that success is achievable.

The consequences of mandatory overtime has detrimental outcomes in both the culture of the workforce in addition to treatment of patients. A nurse is able to perform his or her best when he or she is well rested and therefore able to think critically about the cases that are seen. When a nurse is required to work overtime, the additional stress can impact this process, which may result in inadequate medical care. Furthermore, nurses who are required to work overtime frequently will be less satisfied with their job, which will be reflected in their interactions with other healthcare personnel; when individual nurses demonstrate that they are not being treated fairly, others pick up on this behavior, and it results in a medical staff that is unwilling to put forth their best in their daily work (Aiken 2002).

There are many studies that relate the happiness of workers to on the job performance, and the healthcare field should focus on these factors because good outcome is necessary. According to the article “Nurses and shift work: effects on job performance and job-related stress”, nurses are more or less stressed based on the specific shift they are expected to work (Coffey, 1988). Overall performance was better for nurses who worked during the day, and performance was poorer for nurses who worked nights and weekends. Not coincidentally, the stress patterns are directly related to the amount of nurses available during those time periods. Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are best staffed during the day during normal business hours, and these numbers dwindle in the evening. As a consequence, nurses who work at night have less assistance and have more stress because they have the same volume of patients and are required to figure out how to do more work to help the patients; this is often impossible.

Overall, the nursing shortage has contributed to staffing crises that diminishes the nursing team’s ability to help patients. Nurses become more stressed when they are required to work longer hours, and this is made worse by the fact that they have little assistance. It is necessary to find ways to increase hospital staffing in order to ensure that nurses are able to work normal hours and provide maximal benefit to his or her patients. This report will cover reasonable resolutions to the nurse staffing problem, providing recommendations as necessary. While this undertaking will not be evaluated in practice, it will be able to generate meaningful recommendations to help support the administration in its plight for achieving greater resource use.

Problem Statement

This research focuses on whether staff members in an organization perform their tasks according to the company’s guidelines. It is common knowledge among business that adequate staffing is essential to accomplishing goals. However, if they do not function to produce desires outcomes it would be a waste of human resources. There is an industrial climate whereby staffing has become a serious problem in many industries across the world. Companies may attempt to design adequate staffing ratios for appropriate task accomplishments. However, some employees may find it very difficult due to other pressure in their lives to complete them successfully. These difficulties reflect on job performance as absenteeism, lateness, limited productivity and motivation in the work environment.

There are certain professions such as nursing where immense shortages occur. Healthcare professionals often complain of work overload and research has found it to be true. Experts have contended that increasing recruitment could resolve staffing shortages, but it is not that easy because when staff leaves soon after recruitment there is need for more staff. Therefore, besides maintaining adequate staffing, employers are faced with retention of existing staff. The misery-go-round of work overload resignations, recruitment, work overload and resignations continues. Consequently, it must be understood that traditional staffing strategies must be evaluated for more compatible means of addressing staffing shortages, resignations, retention and work over load issues.

Evaluation Overview

In order to solve the aforementioned problem, there are two alternatives that we can be applied. They consist first of conducting a recruitment process and secondly increasing compensation packages along with provision of attractive competitive benefits. The recruitment will help a company to resolve overloading of tasks. There would be increased task per person ratio. It will enable efficient distribution workload, training of new employees and improvement in productivity. Since there is heavy workload, the necessity for more people to complete and finish tasks is imperative. This limits the degree to which employees are burnt out. Additionally, increasing compensation as an appreciation for an excellent job along with improving benefits is expected to improve workers’ satisfaction. This is valuing of workers as persons of worth and the gifts and talents they bring to the industry (Wood &Payne, 1998). In this way, they will be encouraged to go to work that will result in increased productivity and profitability of the company.

Methods

For a scientific assessment towards arriving at the most appropriate alternatives and solution to the problem, it is imperative that both employees and employers be interviewed. This process can include an anonymous survey or a face-to-face interview with the employees and employers to be conducted by the human resources department or a third-party. A face-to-face interview should be the main method because information can be gathered more accurately than a written survey. Also, it will allow the employees and the employer to clearly communicate their concerns for better resolution.

Evaluation of Alternatives  

The suggested alternatives must be measured before implementation. Five criteria were offered and they are used to measure the two alternatives suggested. This is conducted to assess the company current industrial status in determining the most appropriate measure for resolving the issue.

Conducting recruitment to improve staffing capabilities:

Alternative Criteria A

• Assess the company’s growth to determine whether it can afford recruiting new employees to be included in the payroll? A recruitment expert Dr. Breaugh (2009) conducted an analysis concerning adoption of recruitment models (Breaugh, 2009).
• Employee task ratios can create work overload. Increasing staff facilitates reduction of work overload. Distinct steps include establishing recruitment objectives; developing a recruitment strategy, carry out the process and evaluating the outcomes. In establishing objectives the firm must consider the amount of positions needed to be filled. Types of applicants with respect to education and skills needed to fill positions in the company are another recruitment criterion. Also, the date which, vacancies are to be filled is required on the recruitment objective list (Breaugh, 2009).
• Is there staffing adequate to meet the need of the organization’s workforce demands and is the current labour force capable of increasing profits (Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005). It was emphasized that without adapting specific recruitment models employees will not remain on the job because recruitment is not only to fill vacancies, but to retain staff as well (Breaugh, 2009).

Increased compensation and provision of attractive and competitive benefits

Alternative Criteria B

• Is the company’s growth sustainable to provide increased salary and attractive benefits? Studies show where when employees are compensated with incentives job satisfaction improves as well as performance. Two sets of employees were engaged in the study and researchers found out that high salaries were not the only motivating factors for retention, job satisfaction or improved performance(Depedri, Tortia & Carpita, 2010).
• Would profits be compromised if new staff is recruited and compensation increased? Fu Organizations, which evaluated workers performance over a given period and observed either that they excellently fulfilled the job description roles or went beyond were the most satisfied. No profits were compromised in the process. Instead the company flourished (Depedri et. al, 2010).
• Are the employees being paid wages compatible with their tasks and minimum pay regulations? In assessing reasons for enhanced workers satisfaction it was revealed that the employers of these employees celebrated their achievement as valuable successes offering appreciation incentives. Incentives were perceived as compensation for exceptional performance. Incentives were not confined to money, but extended to tangible awards such as tee shirts, badges and tokens of appreciation. Besides, their wages were compatible with the job description and standard minimum wage (Depedri et.al, 2010).

Findings and Analysis

The proposed alternatives regarding this resolution of staffing difficulties in my company encompass diverse solutions. Recruitment has been used in many industries to resolved staffing issues. However, according to Breaugh (2009) recruitment that is conducted without a model could be useless while recruitment in itself is a valuable resolution to staffing issues in any organization. Therefore, in summarizing the recruitment alternative it is essential, but mangers must have a recruitment plan suitable for their organization. It must embody strategies that will create retainment such as a contractual agreement for a particular period of time along (Breaugh, 2009).

• Job specifications outlining specific tasks categories of employees must complete during their tour of duty is also essential for the recruitment package. With respect to awarding incentives as a technique for retaining staff and keeping them satisfied with the job climate. If job specifications are clear and precisely described to employees upon recruitment, a sense of satisfaction will be insidious from the onset. As such, incentives will only be reinforcement for achieving desired goals by accomplishing tasks efficiently (Depedri et.al, 2010).

Recommendations

It will become necessary for health care organizations to determine how to allocate its human and physical resources more efficiently to meet the health requirements of the patients they serve. This can be done in part by reducing the workload for individual employees, providing them with an understanding of specific tasks they should accomplish and in what order so they don’t feel overwhelmed.

References  

Aiken, L. H. (2002). Commentary. Medical Care Research and Review, 59(2), 215–222.

Coffey LC, Skipper JK Jr, Jung FD. (1988). Nurses and shift work: effects on job performance and job-related stress. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3372899

Breaugh, J. (2009). Recruiting and attracting talent. SHRM Foundation

Depedri, S. Tortia, E., & Carpita, M. (2010), Incentives’ Job Satisfaction and Performance: Empirical Evidence in Italian Social Enterprises, Euricse Working Papers, N.012 | 10

Roman, L. (2008). Nursing shortage: Looking to the future. Retrieved from http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/31510745/nursing-shortage-looking-future

Ulrich, D., & Brockbank, W. (2005). The HR value proposition. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Wood, R., & Payne, TR (1998). Competency-based recruitment and selection. Chichester, UK: Wiley.