Important Issues in the Profession of Nursing Today

Important Issues in the Profession of Nursing Today
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Important Issues in the Profession of Nursing Today
In 2010, former U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the American Nurses Association. In his speech, President Barack Obama said that “America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.” He continued to say that the nurses are “on the front lines of healthcare in small clinics and in large hospitals; in rural towns and in big cities” (The Obama White House, 2010). Truer words have never been spoken. Nurses play crucial roles in the healthcare sectors of all countries. They are the ones tasked with taking care of patients and, therefore, spend most of their time in and outside patient rooms. The involvement of nurses with patients leads to higher patient outcomes, and hence their relevance in the healthcare sector. While assessing the most crucial issues in the nursing profession, several issues come to mind. However, technology, nursing shortage, and the need for higher levels of education and training take precedence. These three issues speak to the current state of the nursing profession while also shedding light on the possibilities of the future within the profession. Provided herein is an elucidation of the three factors’ relevance and influence in the healthcare sector.
Need for Higher Levels of Education and Training
The healthcare sector is changing fast. Today, there are more elderly patients with increasingly new care demands that strain the care providers. Also, increasingly new conditions or diseases strain the provision of care. Another issue that showcases a major change in the healthcare sector is the large number of experienced and older nurses retiring from their positions, leaving healthcare teetering on the verge of collapse. When the Medicaid and Medicare programs were initiated, a significant percentage of the populace saw the need to join the nursing workforce. Of this lot, many were women, and they helped to hold steady the American healthcare system. By the 90s, there was a lot of experience within the healthcare sector from nurses whose retiring age was fast approaching. However, it was becoming apparent that the healthcare sector was not prepared for any sudden change in the numbers. Losing any percentage of this lot meant a loss of irreplaceable experience and knowledge that had been amassed for close to four decades
The gap created by these losses needs to be filled. However, there has never been a clear path on how such a gap can be filled. Every aspect of the nursing profession was impacted by these losses. One such sector was the education sector, which lost educators with years of experience and knowledge of the American health system. A shortage of healthcare educators means that nursing schools have been greatly affected by faculty shortages. Faculty shortages result from either non-conducive working environments or a high rate of retiring faculty members. In the U.S., a majority of the nursing educators are part of members who joined the nursing workforce back when the Medicaid and Medicare programs were launched. Therefore, many of them have reached retiring age. However, there being a need to help nurses cope with advanced and new healthcare issues, there is a need to reduce the faculty shortage issue.
A changing healthcare landscape means increasingly difficult and more complex healthcare problems, which necessitates a highly trained and skilled nursing workforce. As indicated in the IOM 2010 report, patient needs are becoming “more complicated, and nurses need to attain requisite competencies to deliver high-quality care” (IOM, 2010). The need for nurses to attain higher levels of skills and education has never been as serious and crucial as it is right now. The gaps in experience and knowledge need to be filled by people just as qualified. Therefore, there is a need to invest more resources to help nurses become as skilled and experienced as the retiring professionals. Programs to help ensure continuous training and enhancement of the nurses’ skills are needed. The government, alongside private healthcare organizations, should invest in the skills and experiences of their nursing workforce to ensure a higher level of preparedness is attained.
Nursing Shortage
Nursing shortage is another issue that is currently among the most crucial in the nursing profession. It is simply the lack of adequate numbers of nurses to help deal with the number of patients within a healthcare system. In the world today, there is an ongoing issue of nursing shortage. According to the World Health Organization (2020), nurses and midwives make up about 50% of the world’s healthcare workforce. However, the world happens to have a shortage of the same in large numbers. WHO (2020) estimates that the world will need an addition of 9 million nurses and midwives to help attain the Sustainable Development Goal of health and wellbeing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s nursing shortage was greatly evident as the already depleted nursing workforce was trying to combat a virus that the world knew very little about. The persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the few available nurses were expected to deal with the rising number of patients, and this happened on quite a short notice. Some Western countries resorted to strategies like hiring nurses from Africa and other third-world countries to help manage the spread of the virus. As it stands, the nursing profession has lost its stature as a key profession, and it would not be surprising to see more nurses looking to quit their jobs in the near future.
The effects of the nursing shortage are quite extensive, and they impact the lives of nurses and patients. In her study, Karen (2019) notes that the effect for patients is quite dire. She writes that patients have a lower chance of survival because of nursing shortage. With a lower number of registe...