Nursing Shortage Measures, Annotated Bibliography Example

Nursing shortage has become an issue in the developed countries today. Nursing shortage is a situation where nurses’ demand is more than the supply. The nursing responsibilities have increased making most patients to have reduced attendance from the nurses. The increased new opportunities among the nurses have drained the number of the nurses in the acute care settings. The aging workforce has also led to nurse shortage as well as retention problems and problems of recruiting the young people (Thomas).

There are several effects that occur due to nursing shortage. They include increased nurses’ patient’s loads: increased error risk: increased infection spread risk between the patient and staff: increased risk for the occupational injury: increased deaths and others (Claire).

Health care industries in responding to nurses’ shortage have utilized float pool nurses and also agency nurses. Agency nurses are those that are employed by a staffing organization that is independent and have opportunity of working in any hospital on daily, weekly or even contractual basis. Float pool nurses are those nursing staffs who are employed by hospital to work in any organization unit (Harriet 50).

There has also been international recruitment of nurses to reduce the shortage arising. Foreign trained recruitment especially by United States has been seen as a stop gap although not a solution to the shortage.

There has emerged a specialized sub set of nursing agency that has evolved lately, this is travel nursing group which often serve the needs of those hospitals that are affected by acute nurse shortage (Claire).

In the process of reducing the shortage of nurses in U.S., a nursing recruitment initiative has been started as well as developing workforce programs to contract this. The initiative helps the nurses to get back to the nursing career or profession especially through credentialing and the exam for nursing board.

Retention and recruitment are very important towards the long term solution to shortage in the nursing sector. The retention of the nurses has significantly reduced the shortage in the nursing field. Another solution has been through incentives and the funding by the hospital and their employers to retain the current staff numbers and this would avoid the aggravating turnover (Thomas).

There has increased encouragement by the governments and other recruiting agents on the importance of entering the nursing field among the young generation. This has significantly worked very well and has been seen to reduce the current shortage of the nurses.

Works Cited

Claire Fagin & Pam Maraldo. The center for Nursing Advocacy.18 Oct. 2007. 5 Dec 2009. http://www.nursingadvocacy.org/faq/nursing_shortage.html

Claire and Pam looks on various reasons on why there is shortage of nurses and why it continues to exist in the various parts of the world. They look at various reasons of why there was nurse shortage in United States and other nations of the world in the 1990’s. They explain why there are shortages of willing nurses, shortage of perceived funding, shortage of understanding by the nurses on delivering care and nurse empowerment and education shortage.

Geraldine, Bednash. “Policy, politics, & Nursing practice.” Nursing workforce 110.35 (7 Nov 2001): 24-45.

Geraldine prepared this journal on work force to address various problems in nursing field. This is prepared and analyzed at American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).This speaks out of the nursing shortage and calls for more employment of the nurses in this sector. It emphasizes on the need for more production of nurses from all entry programs without focus on varying nurses’ competence from varying educational programs. It emphasizes on the need to increase the nursing workforce in health care sector.

Harriet R. Feldman. The nursing shortage: strategies for recruitment and retention in clinical practice and education. London: Springer Publishing Company, 2003.

Harriet gives various reasons on why there is nursing shortage in the health sector. He also proposes on various strategies for recruiting the nurses and how to increase the labor force in the nursing sector. It gives various ways approaches to undergo in order to be able to recruit qualified nurses in the health sector. Harriet proposes on various education practices that need to be educated to the young nurses for them to be competent.

Kings, Steve. “Nursing Career.” Labor shortage [London] 8 Oct. 2007: A4.

Kings says that the nursing career has been threatened by the shortage of labor which is increasing day by day. He says that this shortage has overwhelmed the departments that are concerned with t