Healthcare Staff Shortage: Article Review and Strategic Solutions

This report addresses the critical issue of nursing staff shortages in the United States healthcare system. It begins by highlighting the existing and projected shortages, emphasizing the impact on patient care, nurse workloads, and potential dissatisfaction. The report reviews an article discussing the alarming shortage, the aging nursing workforce, and economic factors influencing retirement decisions. It also examines the Mayo Clinic's approach to addressing the shortage, including research and the implementation of both short-term and long-term solutions. The report suggests several strategies to mitigate the shortage, such as providing training, offering flexible schedules, promoting higher education, and improving communication between nurses and management. These solutions aim to improve staff retention, create a positive work environment, and ultimately enhance the quality of healthcare services. The report also acknowledges potential challenges and trade-offs associated with each proposed solution, offering a comprehensive overview of the complex issue and potential strategies for resolution.

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Shortage of nursing staff: article review and strategic solution
Nurses are found to be the single biggest clutch of healthcare professionals in the
United States. Projected and existing nursing shortage imitates the fact that only some people
are coming in the profession. Among this, nursing shortage are seen which is not easy to
project or estimate. There are several personal and professional reasons behind shortage of
nursing staff in the Commonwealth Fund US Health System. However, the number of nurses
is projected to increase due to the aging of baby boom generation. However, these changes
might be costly as well as difficult to respond to the future deficiency. The shortage of
nursing staff puts higher impact on the services. It is obvious that when nurses will not be
sufficient, timely services will not be provided to the patients. This will lead to the patient
dissatisfaction to the patient. It might also be possible that they will not avail the service
again from same healthcare centre. In addition to this, this will increase the burden on those
few nursing staff who are remaining in the organisation. As a result of this, stress will be seen
in those staff members and will lead to poor productivity as a result.
In the first reviewed article, it has stated the example of a mother who faced problems
due to shortage of nurse. It is written that shortage of nursing staff is alarming. Nursing is
seen as the fastest growing occupation in the country. Despite of this, supply is not according
to the supply. The major reason for this shortage is that registered nurses are recently older
than 50 years of age. At the same time, nearly 70,000 nurses will retire the labour force by
2024. Downturn in the economy is another reason nurses are helding off retirement (Marc et
al, 2019).
It is seen that Mayo clinic has affected the shortage of staff. In order to address the
problem, it has done the primary research. The reason behind collecting information through
interview is to know why nursing staff is short. By taking the interviews with employees of
Mayo Clinic, It is able to provide the effective solutions to clinic staff shortage and
development of short as well as long term solutions for mitigating the problem. In the
perspective of short term, it encouraged the older workers to delay the retirement, and
utilising transitory personnel. Short-term solutions are mostly expected in helping to mitigate
the recent understaffing, and promoting employee holding.

Solutions to address the shortage of nursing staff
For retention of the nursing staff, it can provide the time-to-time training to its staff.
Through this, nursing staff will also think that they are given value in the organisation. At the
same time, organisation also be able to maintain the market advantage. In order to cope up
with the shortage of staff, healthcare facilities are required to ensure the proper recruitment
by appreciating them, offering them good opportunities as well as giving them voice in the
organisation. Firstly, they can provide them flexible schedule (Qian, Yu & Hailey,
2016).They help the nurses to manage their busy schedule with the educational opportunities
and home life. It will also help them in decompressing their emotionally and stressful
demanding shifts. Organisations should also keep the nurses happy when it comes to
scheduling. It will help in creating the working atmosphere positive and will help in retaining
the quality nurses. It is also suggested to provide the highest education to nurses as possible.
This will help in creating nursing staff more satisfied (Hoseini-Esfidarjan & Negarandeh,
2017). The negative side of this approach is that nurses might leave the organisation that will
affect the time as well as cost of the organisation that was spent on them. The third possible
solution for overcoming the shortage of staff is giving nurses proper face time with the
supervisors and managers so that they can also share their ideas about bringing the
improvement in workflow. By implementation of those suggestions and ideas also shows or
depicts nurses that hospital managers are quote serious about their input and opinion. In such
a situation, it might be possible that conflict arise between the employees if any of the
employee opinion is not considered. In such a situation, organisation also suffers when
employees started leaving the organisation when any of their opinion is not given due
consideration (Abhicharttibutra et al, 2017).

References
Abhicharttibutra, K., Kunaviktikul, W., Turale, S., Wichaikhum, O. A., & Srisuphan, W.
(2017). Analysis of a government policy to address nursing shortage and nursing
education quality. International nursing review, 64(1), 22-32.
Hoseini-Esfidarjani, S. S., & Negarandeh, R. (2017). A new view towards resolving the
nursing shortage challenge. Journal of hayat, 23(3), 196-200.
Marć, M., Bartosiewicz, A., Burzyńska, J., Chmiel, Z., & Januszewicz, P. (2019). A nursing
shortage–a prospect of global and local policies. International nursing review, 66(1),
9-16.
Mayo Clinic. (2018). Solution to Clinical Staff Shortage in Healthcare Industry – Case Study
of Mayo Clinic example. Retrieved from:
https://homework-lab.com/examples/solution-to-clinical-staff-shortage-in-
healthcare-industry-case-study-of-mayo-clinic-4696/
Qian, S., Yu, P., & Hailey, D. (2016). Nursing staff work patterns in a residential aged care
home: a time–motion study. Australian Health Review, 40(5), 544-554.