Health care

Running Head: SHORTAGE OF NURSES IN THE US Health sciences and medicine   Topic:  health care Insert Insert Insert Instructor’s Name:
Date:
Introduction
Shortage of nurses in the US greatly interfered with the health standards. The essay is aimed at determining ways through which shortage of nurses in the US would be resolved.
The change in Nurses roles
When shortage of nurses hits any health institution, the most affected are the patients who are in dire need of adequate monitoring to assist them recover from various ailments, but in order to maintain nurses the health institutions have to reconsider empowering nurses in order for the nurses to realize their roles in the health sector through various ways of improving patient case (Cantafalio, 1997, p. 28).
However, not all nurses are trained to handle all procedures equally; there are some procedures that only specific nurses would handle hence nurses are force to learn how to handle any procedure that may come their way (Shi, 2007, p. 50).
i. Recruiting foreign nurses
One of the method s that the US utilizes is through recruiting foreign nurses which is aimed at attainingthe required number of nurses within a short while to fix the shortage. This is because most of the foreign nurses just like citizens prefer moving to USA as well as other foreign countries like the US (William, 2008, p. 103). The reasons behind the growth in demand for nurses includes change in demographic representation for instance high population growth, the increasing number of the elderly parents and effective medication that reduces the redirected their roles, and produce more of that of nurses (Willians & Wilkins, 2002, p. 19)
ii. Recruiting nurses from WHO
Nurses are very important in any health institution, the shortage of nurses especially in the USA would impact on the global community hence the World Health Organization and other NGOs are likely to assign some of their nurses to be based in the USA to assist avert the nurse’s crisis to aid in saving lives of the innocent people (Shi, 2007, p. 57).
iii. Retention strategies
The different health institutions for instance, the ones that have their own training schools should organize and retain the best performing graduates so that they could get direct employment once they are through with their education (Willians & Wilkins, 2002, p. 15). This would reduce the number of nurses required in the USA job market. When the number of nurses required is low, they are likely to be comfortable at their places of work (William, 2008, p. 116).
However, from the three recruitment processes, I would recommend the nurses retention from then various referral and teaching hospitals in the USA as they are already used to the working conditions in the USA. However, once they are employed it would be easier to transfer them to various parts of the US (Cantafalio, 1997, p. 41).
Effects of nurses understaffing on the patients
Under staffing would be a health hazard as the patients are likely to attain poor and irregular treatment and monitoring care as the nurses who should be monitoring the patient conditions engaged in other services within the health care institution (William, 2008, p. 122).
Conclusion
Shortage of nurses implies that the fewer nurses available have to work extra hard to cover the work that would have been carried out by their colleagues. According to the labor laws as well as the nursing regulations, it’s illegal to work 24/7 hence the workers are not allowed to over exhaust themselves. Through WHO, recruiting foreign nurses and nurse’s retention after colleges, I suppose the US should retain their best nursing students to work in the health facilities.
References
Cantafalio, Ralph. (1997). Whatever happened to the general practitioners. Pensylvannia- USA: Nova Publishers.
Shi, Leiyu. (2007). Managing human resources in health care organizations. Najing- China: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
William, Chuck. (2008). 5Th Edi. Management: Human Resources & Personnel Management. New York- USA: Cengage Learning.
Willians, Loppincott & Wilkins. (2002). 3Rd Edi. Illustrated Manual of Nursing Practice. London-UK: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.