A shortage of nurses in the overcrowding emergency department

Running head: EMERGENCY NURSING
EMERGENCY NURSING
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

EMERGENCY NURSING1
Introduction:
In the clinical setting shortage of nurses has gained increased attention since it
significantly impacts the quality of care of the nurses. The essay will focus on a clinical issue
where a shortage of nurse such as 1(nurse): 4(patients) ratio in the overcrowding emergency
department. The essay aims to provide a solution-focused approach to issues along with the
policy guideline in the following paragraphs
Contemporary issue and solution:
As discussed above the shortage of nurse such as 1(nurse): 4(patients) ratio in the
overcrowding emergency department impacted the quality of care of the critically ill patients.
The prime reason is that the shortage of nurses contributed to extra working hours, limited
allocated time for each patient which may result in the high level of medication errors,
negligence, and job burnout. The shortage can indirectly contribute to morbidity and mortality
rate (Zhu, Rodgers and Melia 2018). The common causes behind the shortage of nursing
professionals include lack of potential educator, inequitable distribution of the workforce and
high turnover rate. The other reasons can be ageing workforce, ageing population, violence in
the workplace setting.
In this context, one solution-based approach to address the issue is government funding
to hire more emergency qualified nurses to change to 1nurse to 3 patient ratio. The government
funding will increase recruitment of nursing professionals with excellent expertise and evidence-
based knowledge. It can be an effective approach to increase the workforce (Zhu, Rodgers and
Melia 2018). In Australia, a range non-government agencies advocate for increasing the
government funding for overcoming shortage of nurse since it will facilitate appropriate

EMERGENCY NURSING2
distribution and recruitment of new registered nurses. The NSW Department of Health
Reporting System indicate that in May 2001 the public sector was ‘actively recruiting’
approximately 1 486 FTE positions with the help of government funding (Kenny, Reeve and
Hall 2016)
Rational and implementation process:
Gore et al. (2016), suggested that high nurse to patient ratio provide nursing professionals
with an opportunity to reflect compassion and empathy through effective practice which will
increase patient satisfaction. The NSW Health has employed around 6700 nurses from March
2011- June 2017 in regional and rural areas that has increased the nursing workforce by as much
as 17% (Parliament of New South Wales 2020). An increase has also been recorded in
employment of new midwives and nurses to 2400 in 2018 from 1600 in 2010. Hence, people can
seek help from this service.
In this case, in the local level, the shortage of nurse can be addressed through the
recruitment of nursing professionals where professionals can be provided with an opportunity to
involve in a range of training for their professional development, education opportunities (Aggar
et al. 2018). The effective way of overcoming nursing shortage is to increase the government
funding for recruitment of nurses is to provide a proposal with evidence of consequences that
nursing professional experience in absence of adequate nurses. (Zhu, Rodgers and Melia
2018). The NSW Liberals & Nationals Government has promised an investment of around $2.8
billion for recruiting thousands of frontline staff, nurses and midwives for the patients that will
help in workload sharing and bring about an enhancement of patient care (NSW Government
2019). Moreover, the Election Policy Costing proposes presenting slightest nurse-to-patient
ratios for emergency, paediatric, surgical, medical and other NSW health facilities from 2020.