Healthcare Report: Nursing Staffing Shortage, Impact, and Solutions

This report addresses the critical issue of nursing staffing shortages and its significant impact on healthcare organizations and patient care quality. It examines the causes of the shortage, including an aging workforce and unhealthy working conditions, and highlights the resulting challenges, such as increased workloads and high nurse turnover. The report uses the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in Jamaica as a case study to illustrate these impacts. It then reviews various strategies to mitigate the shortage, including reducing occupational stress through adequate staffing and flexible working hours, as well as creating autonomous work environments. The report analyzes the potential benefits and drawbacks of each strategy, offering insights into effective approaches for improving nurse retention and enhancing the overall quality of care. Finally, the report concludes that effective organizational support and management practices are crucial for addressing this national healthcare issue and ensuring a sustainable healthcare system.

Running Head: Nursing Staffing Shortage
NURSING STAFFING SHORTAGE

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Organizational impact of nursing shortage................................................................................3
Summary of selected articles......................................................................................................3
Strategies used for addressing the organizational impact of nurse shortage..............................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
Reference list..............................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Nursing shortage has become one of the national healthcare issues that directly impact
on performance of the organization and the quality of patient care. This study is focusing on
the organizational impact of this healthcare issue and mitigation strategies of this issue.
Additionally, this study is mentioning potential strategies that may be considered suitable for
retaining nurses.
Organizational impact of nursing shortage
Nursing shortage is affecting the service quality of healthcare organizations. As
mentioned by Armmer (2017), there are several reasons behind nursing shortage and these
include an aging workforce, limited supply of young nurses, unhealthy working practice in
healthcare setting and others. Shortage of nurses prevents hospitals to provide medical care to
patients according to the situation and needs. This issue has a great impact on hospitals such
as the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) of Jamaica. In 2018, CRH has lost approximately
500 nurses and in this current year, near about 300 nurses already resigned from this hospital
(Jamaica-star.com, 2019). This higher rate of nurse turnover is impacting on the performance
of this organization. As a reason, it has been found that leaders and d managers of this
hospital ask nurses to serve more than 40 hours. It means that nurses are facing trouble with
this excessive workload and this reason is influencing them to resign.
Summary of selected articles
The national healthcare issue of staff shortage can be mitigated through various
effective strategies. As opined by Nowrouzi et al. (2015), reducing occupational stress can
help to address the issue of shortage of nurses and nurse turnover. This is done by recruiting
adequate number of nurses in healthcare organizations. Moreover, flexible working hours in
hospitals also reduce occupational stress. Nurses face different problems such as insufficient
support from management, lack of personal resources like conflict resolution management. In

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a hospital shortage of nurses occurs due to huge turnover as they migrate to organizations that
provide better opportunities. In this article, another remedy of organizational support like
psychological intervention has been proposed that can be used to increase satisfaction rate of
staff. Nowrouzi et al.(2015) stated that psychological intervention training can cause
improvement in knowledge and attitudes of nurse that impacts in quality of care. This type of
organizational support can help to prevent burnout of nurses.
On the other hand, in the article by Kirkham (2016), it is mentioned that an
autonomous work environment can also help to retain a skilled workforce. An autonomous
work environment helps in proper control of workload thus increasing satisfaction rate of
nurses. Participants in this research article have proposed the need for balanced autonomy
with proper collaboration and teamwork. This can help in division of work and thus a
dynamic work environment can be created. This, in turn, can help retail skilled nurses in the
hospital, which can impact on quality patient care. However, Kirkham (2016) mentioned that
autonomy is also challenging because exertion of control over one's performance needs
proper critical thinking and good knowledge about problem-solving. Moreover, participants
in this research article believe that the creation of an autonomous work environment supports
innovation and helps to work toward positive change.
Strategies used for addressing the organizational impact of nurse shortage
Several potential strategies are used to address the issue of nursing shortage in
hospitals. For example, hiring more nurses is a good strategy for organizations like CRH to
address the issue of nursing shortage. However, this strategy has both negative and positive
impact on the organization. CRH can improve the quality of patient care and can earn more
capital by considering this strategy. However, Armmer (2017) have mentioned that
organizations are bound to invest more time and money in recruitment and this aspect can be
considered as a negative effect of this strategy.

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On the other hand, it has been found that maintaining flexible working hours helps
in addressing the nursing shortage issue. It can help to retain nurses by increasing job
satisfaction level. However, Wyte-Lake et al. (2013) have stated that it may force
organizations to change their practice and it can cause resistance from leaders and managers.
Maintaining an autonomous working environment is another solution to nursing shortage
issue that has both positive and negative impact on organization. According to Kirkham
(2016), this practice may increase job satisfaction in nurses, but leaders may face difficulties
in controlling operations of the organization.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the shortage of nursing staff is a national healthcare issue that
impacts on patient care quality. Moreover, it creates additional stress on current nursing staff.
This can be solved through effective support from management like creation of autonomous
work environment.

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Reference list
Armmer, F. (2017). An inductive discussion of the interrelationships between nursing
shortage, horizontal violence, generational diversity, and healthy work environments.
Administrative Sciences, 7(4), 34. Retrieved
fromhttps://search.proquest.com/central/docview/1988596930/fulltextPDF/
50CB420482744894PQ/5?accountid=188056
Jamaica-star.com. (2019). News. Retrieved on 8th September 2019, from:http://jamaica-
star.com/article/news/20190902/nursing-shortage-crippling-hospital
Kirkham, A. (2016). Enhancing nurse faculty retention through quality work environments: A
photovoice project. Nursing Economics, 34(6), 289-295,302. Retrieved
fromhttps://search.proquest.com/docview/1850303334?accountid=188056
Nowrouzi, Behdin, PhD,O.T.Reg (Ont), Lightfoot, N., PhD., Larivière, M., PhD, Carter, L.,
PhD., Rukholm, E., PhD., Schinke, R., EdD., & Belanger-Gardner, D. (2015).
Occupational stress management and burnout interventions in nursing and their
implications for healthy work environments: A literature review. Workplace Health &
Safety, 63(7), 308-315.Retrieved
fromhttps://search.proquest.com/central/docview/1732157190/fulltextPDF/
345E584308E942BCPQ/14?accountid=188056
Wyte-Lake, T., Tran, K., Bowman, C. C., Needleman, J., & Dobalian, A. (2013). A
systematic review of strategies to address the clinical nursing faculty shortage.
Journal of Nursing Education, 52(5), 245-252. Retrieved
fromhttps://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d57c/e27ebb7efaac6bd9bbc63df34cf0f04a6785.
pdf

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