Nursing Shortage & How to Reverse It

Nursing shortage is one of the acute problems in the sphere of modern health care. Nursing shortage is the term, which is generally used to describe the situation, when the demand for nursing professionals exceeds the current supply, either nationally or globally. This could be measured with the help of nurse-to-patient ratio or nurse-to-population ratio. This situation is usually strictly controlled in developed and developing nations of the world. It is important to underline that nursing shortage could not be explained only by the lack of supply of trained nurses. The reasons could vary, for example in some situations such shortages happen simultaneously with increased admission rates for the students into nursing schools. “Potential factors include lack of adequate staffing ratios in hospitals and other health care facilities, lack of placement programs for newly trained nurses, and inadequate worker retention incentives.” (Goulette, 2010).Nursing Shortage & How to Reverse It The World Health Organization (WHO) controls the situation with nursing shortage on a global level, and it indicates that there is shortage of 4.3 million nurses and other health human resources professionals in the world. Mostly this could be explained by the underinvestment into training, education, working environment, wages and management. It is utterly difficult just to provide a simple description of the status of the nursing workforce shortage either for the present time or for the future. All the factors and aspects of this problem are many-sided and complex; in addition they are closely interrelated with each other. Thus it is neither possible to point out some independent concrete solutions for the problem of nurses’ shortage, instead there is a need to constantly conduct a systematic and profound enough review of the actual situation in health delivery systems.