Position Paper Assignment 2022

Running head: POSITION PAPER
Nursing shortage
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1POSITION PAPER
Introduction- Nursing shortage is an umbrella term that refers to circumstances when
the high demand for nursing personnel like registered nurses (RNs) and advanced practitioner
nurses (APNs) exceed the local, global or national supply of nurses, within healthcare
facilities. Nursing shortage is typically measured in the form of nurse-to-population ratio,
nurse-to-patient ratio, or the total number of nursing vacancies, and necessitates that a greater
number of nursing professionals must be present, than what is presently available (Haddad&
Toney-Butler, 2019). Nursing shortage is not merely accredited to the absence of adequate
supply of qualified and trained nursing professionals. Under most circumstances, the
professed shortage of nursing staff occurs at the same time with an increase in the rate of
admission of students into different medical schools and other factors that govern this issue
are absence of necessary staffing ratio in healthcare centres, non-existence of appropriate
placement programs for the novice nurses, and lack of adequate incentives for retaining the
workers (Willingham, 2018).
Nursing has been identified to be amid one of the fastest developing occupations all
across Canada. However, the nation faces a significant shortfall of nursing personnel that will
continue to increase owing to the absence of nursing educators, the aging population, and the
high turnover. In the year 2018, there were an estimated 31,769 regulated nurses in Canada,
who had an active licence. Of them, 5,697 were nurse practitioners (NPs), 122,600 were
registered practical nurses and 6,023 were registered psychiatric nurses. The complete growth
rate of nurses was roughly 1% (CAN, 2018). Furthermore, the annual growth in 2017 was the

2POSITION PAPER
slowest and it has been found that Canada encountered 0.7% growth in nursing workforce in
2017, in contrast to the 1.3-2.8% yearly growth rateover the last decade (CIHI, 2018). This
position paper will support strategies and measures at the national, state and local levels for
addressing the issue of nursing shortage.
Counterargument-Although nursing shortage has been identified as a major issue in
Canada and countless research studies are being conducted to explore the perceptions and
feelings of nurses about their career, the whole notion of a shortage does not provide a
complete overview of the actual story. The major problem is not that there are inadequate
nursing staff for addressing the healthcare needs of patients in Canada. The actual fact is that
taking into consideration the increase in patient admissions, there are not adequate
sustainable nursing job openings, with supportive work environment and living wages.
Hospital admission rates are generally defined as the mean number of admission to hospitals,
per patient, per year (Anderson et al., 2017).The total number of patients who have been
admitted in a year is divided by the population of that particular geographical area to obtain
the admission rates. Some of the most common reasons that directly contribute to high rate of
inpatient hospitalisation are pregnancy, COPD and bronchitis, pneumonia, acute myocardial
infarction and cardiovascular failure (Cappell, 2017). As per reports published by Elflein
(2019) the hospitalisation rate in Canada was 7994, 7980, and 8054 in 2017-18, 2016-17, and
2015-6, respectively. Thus, the huge number of patient increases the workload of the nurses,

3POSITION PAPER
thereby making it difficult for them to address the care needs of each patient, which is
apparently viewed as nursing shortage.
Hospital budget cuts are another significant factor that are not taken into
consideration, rather described as shortage of adequate nurse. Despite the fact that there is a
consistent influx of nursing students who enter the profession, the real problem lies in the fact
that the hospital administration and employers display a lack of willingness to fund a
completely staffed nursing workforce (Edwards et al., 2016). Hence, nursing shortage is not
due to less number of skilled nurses, rather caused due to the healthcare systems that
demonstrate a failure to capitalise sufficiently on the human resources. The hospitals
typically favour not to employ nurses owing to the high salaries that these nurses demand,
thus leading to workforce shortage. Moreover, there is a persistent notion within the health
and social care sector that trained nursing professionals can be easily substituted by lesser-
accomplished, lesser-competent, henceforth lesser-paid personnel such as,nursing assistants
with few credentials (Needleman, 2017). In other words, amid the huge workload due to high
rate of hospitalisation and the massive gaps in funding for nursing workforce, the turnover
rates amongst the nursing staff increases, thus leading to shortage in the workforce.
However, the aforementioned counterclaims are not justifiable owing to the fact that
there is a growing body of evidence that highlights that sufficient number of qualified nursing
professionals are correlated with excellent quality of care and patient safety, in addition to
decreased mortality rates, lesser instances of hospital readmissions and length of