Shortage of Nurses in Australia - Causes, Effects, and Solutions

This article discusses the shortage of nurses in Australia, its causes, effects, and proposed solutions. The article highlights the need for more nurses in the country to meet the World Health Organization's recommended patient-nurse ratio. The proposed solutions include providing training opportunities, scholarships, and juggling between education and work. The article also examines potential barriers to implementation and how to overcome them.

RUNNING HEAD: SHORTAGE OF NURSES IN AUSTRALIA 1
Shortage of Nurses in Australia
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Shortage of Nurses in Australia
BACKGROUND
According to the statistics published in the year 2015 by the Australia Institute of Health
and Welfare, there were only 307,000 nurses together with the midwives in Australia. This is
however in contrary to the population of the country (Cheng, Bartram, Karimi, & Leggat,
2016).According to the same report. There was a total population of 24 million as by February
2016 and this had the potential of subjecting the country’s healthcare system under a lot of stress
(Aggar, Gordon, Thomas, Wadsworth, & Bloomfield, 2018). The Government had earlier on in
2014 predicted that the Australia future health workforce was in need of more than 123,000
nurses come the year 2030.
The Australian government always checks different industries to identify any shortages
of the skills in particular industries. According to a report published by the Australia’s future
health workforce, it was established that the nursing industry would have a shortage of 85,000
nurses by the year 2025 (Timilsina Bhandari, Xiao, & Belan, 2014).This number was however
expected to grow to 123,000 as of 2030.The government then recommended that the nursing
profession be listed at the skilled occupation list which should subsequently be filled up by the
immigrants who apply through the temporary work visa subclass 457.
The study established that shortage in skills usually occur whenever there is a mismatch
between needs of the population and the available nursing staff. This has subsequent effects on
the economy and the general quality of life of the Australians (Whitehead & Myers, 2016). The
key reason as to the shortage of nurses in Australia is the higher ageing population that are living
with very chronic and complex health conditions. By the time the nursing report on workforce

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sustainability was being undertaken, it was confirmed that the population health trends as well as
the ageing nursing workforce would eventually lead to a shortage of nurses in Australia (Ng
Chok, Mannix, Dickson, & Wilkes, 2018). The key areas that would be affected with the
shortage of nurses include the aged care as well as mental health .It was also predicted that the
focus on future healthcare would be health promotion ,monitoring of chronic diseases and finally
the care of patients suffering from very complex health conditions.
There are different reasons as to why there is generally a low number of nurses and
midwives in Australia. According to the SBS, one of the core reasons is the fact that there are
very few professionals who enter the country and this is due to complications surrounding
obtaining of visas. There are only 457 visas preserved for the employers to only sponsor
temporary skilled overseas employees (Reid, Jones, Hurst, & Anderson, 2018). According to the
same research by the SBS, there were only 1879 nurses who were registered on 457 visas as of
September 2017.This was the least number as from the year 2009 (Tuckett, Winters-Chang,
Bogossian, & Wood, 2014).The low number of the professionals is due to the fact that the
Australian Government want to upskill the local talent so that they can rely on them in future.
To curb the nursing shortages, the Australian government should come up with strategies
so as to avoid stress on the healthcare or the nursing industry. One of the initiatives is to allow
more overseas professionals to come in and boost our local based team of nurses. Setting up of
more nursing schools is another strategy to improve on the number of nurses.The commonwealth
government should also provide better remuneration to the nurses so that more nurses can be
enrolled at the nursing schools (Allen, Holland, & Reynolds, 2014). Within this paper, there will
be an analysis to the possible causes of low number of nurses in Australia, the effects, how to
solve the mystery and the potential barriers to implementation of the strategies.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT
According to studies, the number of nurses remain relatively low in Australia. This has
general negative impact on the Australia’s healthcare system. As compared to the 24 million
population of Australia, 307,000 nurses are very few to meet the World Health Organization
recommendation of the patient nurse ratio. This imbalance leads to stress among the nurses as
they strive to meet all the patients’ needs and this eventually leads to poor services. There should
be efforts from the commonwealth government to make sure that the nurse patient ratio
recommended by the World Health Organization is achieved.
PURPOSE OF THE CHANGE PROPOSAL
This change proposal has different objectives. One of the objective is to find out why
there is a shortage of nurses in Australia. Once the reasons have been established, there should be
efforts to come up with strategies that can improve on the number of nurses in Australia. The
proposal change will examine barriers in implementing the strategies and finally how the barriers
could be overcome.
PICOT
PICOT stands for Population, intervention, comparison, Outcome and finally Time .In
this change proposal, the population refers to the nurses and the Intervention include training
opportunities, providing scholarships and finally juggling between education and work. The
outcome in this proposal is having an increased number of nurses in Australia. The expected time
to reach the recommended time of the number of nurses is 2030.This means that it should be

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around 12 years. In this change proposal, there is no comparison. This is because this is not a
nursing intervention program
LITERATURE SEARCH STRATEGY EMPLOYED
During the search strategy, the key terms for the proposal include, Patient Nurse Ratio,
Australia. Literature was to be outsourced from well-known databases such as PubMed. Most of
the literature found was however found through the use of combined key terms. An illustration of
the PubMed database is shown below.
An image showing how the PubMed data base work (Tuckett, Winters-Chang,
Bogossian, & Wood, 2014)

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EVALUATION OF THE LITERATURE
The kind of literature used was generally of the required standards. Most of the literature
that was used was very relevant to the research problem and majority of the articles used were of
recent dates. The statistics were very accurate. Basically, the all process was a success.
APPLICABLE CHANGE/NRSING THEORY
In this change proposal, there was no nursing theory that was employed or utilized. What
we have is only the applicable changes. The applicable changes in the change proposal include
an increase in the number of nurses from 307,000 to 430,000 registered nurses and midwives.
PROPOSED IMPLEMENTATION WITH OUTCOME MEASURES
Since a shortage of nurses leads to stress on the Australian Healthcare system. There is
the urgent need to come up with strategies to bridge that gap. As a result, there are three
proposed implementations. The three include providing training opportunities, providing
scholarships and finally juggling between education and work. The commonwealth government
has come up with a proposal to provide scholarships to nurse practitioners. Scholarships for the
Nurse Practitioners are on course to be introduced and this also includes the Nursing and Allied
Health Scholarships and the support scheme with the core objective of aiding nurses to further
their education as well as the advanced practice. According to research, the high postgraduate
fees is a concern to many nursing students. With the introduction of the scholarships however, it
will promote as well as encourage better learning and upskilling and finally professional
development within the nursing industries.
Training opportunities is another proposed implementation to reduce the shortage of
nurses. According to the 2014 European study, it was found out that a 10% increase in the

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enrollment at the Bachelor of Nursing degrees leads to 7% lower risk of mortality among the
patients. Further training enables nurses to acquire skills that will lead to effectiveness and
general improvement in the number of nurses.
Juggling education and work is the final proposal to improve on the number of nurses in
Australia. According to a survey conducted among the leading Australian Universities
established that majority of the students shy off enrolling for the nurses’ course at the University
due to fulltime commitment that would not allow them to pursue higher education to masters and
PHD levels. The common wealth government should therefore work on how to allow nurses to
study further. This will also improve on the total number of nurses in Australia.
BARRIERS TO IMPLEMENTATION
In attempts to implement the proposed strategies, there are potential barriers. One such
barrier is inadequate funds. The amount of funds needed to support scholarships in Australia are
quite many and this will negatively impact the economy of the country. Concerning juggling
between education and work, this would lead to stress among the available nurses since the
numbers are very low. In case a nurse leaves to attend classes, there will be a high number of
patients that will be unattended to. Another important barrier is unwillingness amongst the
majority of the students. Most of the students are not willing to enroll for the nursing course due
to its commitment.
OVERCOMING BARRIES
Concerning the issue of inadequate funds, the commonwealth government should seek
assistance from International organizations like the World Bank or the World Health
Organization. To effectively allow the transition of juggling between education and work, the

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common wealth government should consider setting up learning institutions around health
facilities so that in case of an emergency the nurses can consider attending to it then proceed
with the classes later on. The Commonwealth government should take a leading role in
encouraging the students to enroll for the nursing program at both colleges and Universities.

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References
Aggar, C., Gordon, C. J., Thomas, T. H., Wadsworth, L., & Bloomfield, J. (2018).
Evaluation of a community transition to professional practice program for graduate
registered nurses in Australia. Nurse Education in Practice.
doi:10.1016/j.nepr.2018.03.005
Allen, B. C., Holland, P., & Reynolds, R. (2014). The effect of bullying on burnout in
nurses: the moderating role of psychological detachment. Journal of Advanced
Nursing, 71(2), 381-390. doi:10.1111/jan.12489
Cheng, C., Bartram, T., Karimi, L., & Leggat, S. (2016). Transformational leadership and
social identity as predictors of team climate, perceived quality of care, burnout and
turnover intention among nurses. Personnel Review, 45(6), 1200-1216.
doi:10.1108/pr-05-2015-0118
Ng Chok, H., Mannix, J., Dickson, C., & Wilkes, L. (2018). The factors impacting personal
and professional experiences of migrant nurses in Australia: An integrative review.
Collegian, 25(2), 247-253. doi:10.1016/j.colegn.2017.06.004
Reid, C., Jones, L., Hurst, C., & Anderson, D. (2018). Examining relationships between
socio-demographics and self-efficacy among registered nurses in Australia.
Collegian, 25(1), 57-63. doi:10.1016/j.colegn.2017.03.007
Timilsina Bhandari, K., Xiao, L., & Belan, I. (2014). Job satisfaction of overseas-qualified
nurses working in Australian hospitals. International Nursing Review, 62(1), 64-74.
doi:10.1111/inr.12146
Tuckett, A., Winters-Chang, P., Bogossian, F., & Wood, M. (2014). ‘Why nurses are leaving
the profession … lack of support from managers’: What nurses from an e-cohort

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study said. International Journal of Nursing Practice, 21(4), 359-366.
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Whitehead, L., & Myers, H. (2016). The effect of hospital nurse staffing models on patient
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APPENDIX