Summary: The Nursing Shortage

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The nursing shortage affects the entire healthcare system. As Yang, Hung, and Chen (2015) point out, nurses are the largest group of workers in the hospitals. Furthermore, for many years, the nursing shortage has been studied due to the fact that nurses are an essential part of healthcare and as of right now there are not enough of them. Additionally, when someone is hospitalized they will need a nurse to care for them during that time. According to Johnson, Butler, Harootunian, Wilson, and Linan (2016), recessions have a significant effect on nursing shortages. During times of recession, hospitals employ many different ways of trying to alleviate that burden on patients. When a recession hits, workers lose their jobs and with that goes their healthcare, which …show more content…
This is creating a high turnover in healthcare among nurses especially. Collini, Guidroz, and Perez (2015) examined data and found that high turnover is associated with negative outcomes on the patients and the hospital. Unfortunately, when a nurse leaves an institution, it temporarily decreases the nurse-to-patient ratio thereby burdening other nurses on the unit. This has potential to lead to negative outcomes for patients and could increase their mortality, which is why it is essential for facilities to understand the reason those nurses were leaving their jobs (Collini et al., 2015). Similarly, Kunaviktikul et al. (2015) found nursing shortages increased workloads for nurses and led to negative outcomes with patients. When there are not enough nurses to care for patients it puts a burden on other health care workers in that facility. The global concern for nursing shortages vastly influences the quality of care provided to each patient (Kunaviktikul et al., 2015). The negative impact on hospitals around the world is reason enough for the need to know why nursing shortages are

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