Your Search For Career Nursing Jobs
Less than a decade ago, people who were enrolling in nursing school were being told that they were crazy, and that career nursing jobs were not viable. They were told that the job was brutal, and that there simply were no jobs out there for nurses straight out of the Registered Nurse training programs.Not any more! For a long time, people who studied the healthcare industry said that there might be a reversal of fortune, and there has been. Gradually, care providers such as nursing homes and hospitals, who depended on nurses to operate, came to realize that as nurses left their jobs they were becoming more and more difficult to replace. This has led to a severe shortage in the number of nurses available in the US- and the situation is getting worse. The shortage of qualified nurses is a global problem, meaning that health care providers have to compete on a world-wide scale to fill nursing positions.
What the nursing shortage should amount to, in the long run, is a much more improved working environment for nurses in the future. In the short term, however, this shortage is proving to be difficult to overcome and may actually contribute to the frustrations many nurses feel which cause them not only to leave their jobs but also to discourage others from taking up the profession.
In order to ensure that the current crisis in nursing does not continue much further into the future, the two areas of retention and recruitment need to be addressed. This article will take a look at some of the topics that come up among nurses when it comes to addressing these issues.
Making sure that nurses are happy within their current jobs so that they stay in the profession is vital to stabilize the crisis. With anywhere from 25-40% of nurses are expected to retire over the next ten years, ensuring that younger members of the work force stay at their jobs is more important than ever.
The general public is coming to the realization that nurses play just as important a role in the healthcare system as doctors and other medical professionals do, and the industry is starting to realize it, as well. Many nurses complain that they are not accorded the level of respect they deserve, as nursing is seen as less of a “profession” and more of a “job”. Physicians are often guilty of this, making nurses feel as if they are simply there to mechanically carry out the doctor’s orders, and nothing more. As the system loses more and more nurses, it will become more and more important to grant those remaining the appropriate level of respect.
Nurses are often short on respect, but the current nursing shortage is changing that. After all, the amount of education required to become a nurse is the same as that required to earn a B.A., M.A., or earn any other undergraduate degree!
Too often, nurses report that the conditions in their workplace are poor. This doesn’t apply to things necessary to doing a job (i.e. sick patient), but instead applies to things that are directly influenced by management policy such as nurse-to-patient ratio, hours of work, use (or lack of use) of support staff, and the condition of equipment.
A standard nurse’s schedule includes a combination of both day and night shifts. Clearly, it’s impossible to run a medical facility without nurses, so it isn’t as if the night shift can just be eliminated. However, some suggestions for parity include paying extra for nurses that work the night shift, or adding a third “swing shift” to the rotation so that the night shift is not as long as the day shift is.
Continued increases in the budget of the United States government in the area of health care are tagged to help resolve, among other things, the concerns of nurses both with support staff and with equipment. The job of a nurse involves quite a lot of lifting, so it is incredibly important if any nurses are going to make it through to retirement that the equipment available in the hospital eases their burden in this area. Many nurses find that they are also doing duties that are traditionally thought of as the responsibilities of receptionists and orderlies, and in order for nurses to attend to their nursing duties, sooner or later facilities will have to streamline funds so that these support levels are taken care of by staff other than nurses.
The biggest short-term problem facing the industry is the nurse-to-patient ratio. Most facilities are unable to fill vacant positions, and so the ratio remains at a level that many nurses are uncomfortable with. However, efforts to address the issue properly still provide hope.
It’s going to be vital to recruit nurses heavily, as well. There will be marked attempts to train more nurses, as well as healthcare organizations making deals to attract nurses to work for them. If medical providers don’t start paying attention, they will soon find themselves without any nurses to run their facilities!
One of the biggest concerns is that the output of nurses from universities and colleges does not match the number of nurses that are leaving. In addition, many graduating nurses are not going to work in traditional areas such as hospitals, instead choosing the lower levels of stress and the higher levels of pay available at other facilities, such as jails and nursing homes.
In order to improve the patient to nurse ratio that is such a common complaint among nurses, it is vital to increase the number of students coming out of nursing schools across the country. Universities and colleges need to have the funding available to create these spaces. In addition, facilities and governments will have to offer programs such as student loan forgiveness programs in order to attract potential students to the profession.
The last decade has seen a massive growth in secondary industries targeted towards nurses. These industries include nursing agencies and travel nursing programs which hire their own nurses and then contract them out to facilities in need. These nurses are generally higher paid than their counterparts in the facilities they are contracted out to. In addition, they get to change their place of work frequently, often with all travel expenses paid. Facilities are going to need to take a look at this practice and determine if they are willing to offer the kind of wages and benefits that these nurses are receiving if they ever hope to have a stable work force.
As far as the nursing profession goes, the long term future is bright. The current shortage allows a graduating nurse to virtually write his or her own ticket. In addition, the shortage is expected to grow worse, which has pushed the concerns of nurses into the public spotlight. In order to alleviate the shortage, governments and facilities will have no choice but to meet the concerns of nurses in order to keep them at their jobs.
Alternatively, the future of the nursing profession may lie within nursing agencies. Unless facilities and governments realize that the concerns of nurses need to be met at the ground level, new and established nurses alike will continue to gravitate towards the pay and flexibility that these agencies offer.
That should be enough to sink your teeth in to. It’s a great time to be a nurse- you’re in very high demand- and it’s likely to only get better.
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