NUR 308 Fall 2018: Change Project on Professional Nursing Practice

This project addresses the critical issue of nursing shortage by proposing changes in organizational culture and leadership within the healthcare system. It begins by defining nursing shortage, highlighting current findings that predict a severe shortage by 2020 due to factors like aging nurses, lack of qualified faculty, and nurse burnout. The project synthesizes research, identifying the increasing age of nurses, lack of resources in nursing schools, and shortage of qualified faculty as key contributors. It introduces the idea of improving organizational culture and leadership to enhance the work environment and staff retention. Proposed changes include enhancing organizational support, increasing wages, and providing incentives. The project anticipates barriers such as nurses' resistance to change and lack of qualified nurses, while facilitators include reduced turnover and enhanced care quality. Champions of change are identified as organizational management and healthcare professionals. The evaluation of change will be based on staff perception, thoughts, and retention levels. The project concludes that solving the nursing shortage requires multi-faceted strategies, emphasizing effective leadership development, workforce capability improvement, and positive organizational culture.

Problem of Nurse
Shortage

Definition of Nursing Shortage
 According to the study of Littlejohn et al (2012), nurse
shortage can be defined as the problem or the
situation, under which the demand of the nursing
professionals (such as the Registered Nurses) exceeds
the supply and this problem is evaluated on the
national or global context.

Definition of Nursing Shortage
 Nurse shortage is also considered as the human
resource issue, which means shortage of the
workforce in comparison to the demand (Kingma,
2018).
 Another definition of nurse shortage is associated with
the demand of professional capacity of the nurses, the
lack of such capacity can also be considered as nurse
shortage (Kingma, 2018).

Current Findings
 The current findings inform that the problem of nurse shortage is
a very critical problem in the healthcare system of the United
States.
 Nurse shortage problem can reach to shortage of one million
nurses by the year 2020.
 Major reasons of nurse shortage the United States is lack of
qualified faculty, lack of resources for nursing schools, rapidly
aging population of registered nurses, ineffective and
inexperienced nurses and low wages with excessive workload.
 Nurse burnout is also a major problem due to excessive
workload, increasing demand of patients and increasing
prevalence of chronic diseases (McHugh & Ma, 2014).

Synthesis of Findings
 Study conducted by Cox, Willis, & Coustasse (2014)
identified that increasing age of the existing registered
nurse is leading them towards the retirement age, which
is a significant reason of nurse shortage in the United
States. The similar findings have been identified in the
study of McHugh & Ma (2014) that the nurse turnover
rate increases with the increasing age of existing
workforce and increasing workload.

Synthesis of Findings
 Another finding of the literature is informed by
Peterson (2017) is that there is a lack of resources and
qualified faculty in the nursing schools, due to which
new enrollments could not be received. Similar
findings have also been presented by the study of
MacLean et al (2014), which states that shortage of
the nursing faculty is the major reason of nursing
shortage in primary healthcare system of the country.

Synthesis of Literature
 The study conducted by Nardi & Gyurko (2013), has
also informed that the problem of shortage of the
qualified and experienced faculty for preparing the
future workforce is a significant problem in the
developed countries. The lack of qualified faculty
results in the lack of qualified and effective workforce
that could be placed in the primary healthcare system.

Synthesis of Literature
 The new ideas that the studies present is about
bringing the change in organizational culture to
improve the work environment, as the work
environment have significant impact on the working
capacity and motivation of nurses to continue working
(Nantsupawat et al, 2017). Also, enhancing and
improving the organizational leadership and
leadership approaches can help in staff retention.

Introduction to Proposed Change
 The proposed change is to bring changes in the organizational
culture and organizational leadership.
 Evidences have informed that effective work environment, work
culture and supportive environment can help in workforce
retention (Peterson, 2017).
 Enhancing the organizational support for nurses, increasing
wages and providing incentives can motivate nurses to continue
working with organization.

Anticipated Barriers and
Facilitators The two Barriers are:
 1. The perception and attitude of the nurses towards change.
 Lack of qualified nurses in the system.
 Two Facilitators are:
 Change can result in reducing the problem of high turnover.
 Change can enhance the quality of nursing care by reducing
workload.

Champions of Change
 The champions of the change will be the people involved in the
project.
 The organizational management, staff and healthcare
professionals will be the champions who will play a significant
role in identifying the need of change and implementing change.

Evaluation of Change
 The evaluation of change will be done through the changes that
have occurred within organization.
 The perception and thoughts of the staff will be evaluated to
understand that how the change have resulted in improving their
experience.
 Lastly change will be evaluated through analyzing the level of
staff retention.