Combating Nursing Shortage: Strategies for Rural Community Healthcare

The United States is currently facing a significant nursing shortage, particularly affecting rural communities, exacerbated by factors such as high burnout rates, inadequate training, and the retirement of the baby boomer generation of nurses. This essay explores the multifaceted nature of this crisis, emphasizing the critical need for nurse practitioners to fill healthcare gaps in rural areas. It proposes several strategies to alleviate the shortage, including incentivizing new graduates to practice in rural settings through increased pay and benefits, investing in long-term professional development for nurses to promote them into leadership roles, and offering flexible work schedules to improve work-life balance. The essay utilizes operant conditioning principles to suggest rewarding positive behaviors, such as perfect attendance, to improve staff morale and motivation. The essay also underscores the importance of professional development to enhance nurses' competency and the quality of care provided. Furthermore, it highlights the need for healthcare facilities to adopt innovative approaches to recruitment and retention to effectively address the ongoing nursing shortage and improve healthcare outcomes in rural areas.

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NURSING SHORTAGE
Nursing Shortage

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Nursing Shortage
The United States is amidst a nursing shortage in rural communities coupled with the
global pandemic. The quandary may be attributed to the multifactorial variable—high
burnout rates, inadequate training, increased monetary penalties, and anxiety (Xu, Intrator,
& Bowblis 2020). It is projected that the nursing shortage may be intensified by nurses
retiring that belongs to the baby boomer generation (Saville, Dall’Ora & Griffiths 2020). The
Nursing Management Aging Workforce Survey (NMAWS) reported that 65% plan to retire
within the next five years (Saville, Dall’Ora & Griffiths 2020). With the current state of the
health care industry, workforce instability and global pandemic can cause a cataclysmic
impact on rural communities.
Rural communities are currently faced with a lack of primary care providers, as a
solution, it has been mandated that nurse practitioners may become physician extenders
and fill the medical disparity that pertains to health care services. Therefore, it is crucial
that new graduates of nursing practice in rural communities (Xu, Intrator, & Bowblis 2020).
However, meeting the current demand is especially difficult due to a lack of interest in
practicing in these communities. Some strategies proposed to remedy the predicament is to
incentivize and increase the new grad pay scale that practices in rural communities.
Secondly, invest in long-term training and professional growth by promoting in-house staff
nurses into managerial and leadership positions that requisites innovative training and
knowledge skillset. Finally, provide a flexible work schedule that accommodates the work
and life balance that encumbered nurses.

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With the basis of operant conditioning coined by B.F. Skinner that pertains to the
associative learning process that an environmental stimulus influences the behavioral
response. To reinforce a desirable response, rewarding the positive behavior encourages
the likelihood of producing the same reaction (Song, Takahashi, & Sakurai 2020). The same
principle can be extrapolated for incentivizing nurses that generate desirable outcomes and
behaviors. For example, reward nurses with perfect attendance to motivate staff and
improve employee morale (Song, Takahashi, & Sakurai 2020). Try to offer a point system
that rewards staff that works an extra shift. Once accumulated, points can purchase a
special prize, or it can be used as added hours off work. Avoid rewarding unhealthy working
behavior such as working while sick may compromise the quality of care.
Medical facilities should commit to long-term professional development for nurse
staff. As nurses become experienced with increased dexterity towards a respective specialty
it wise that nurses be promoted into a managerial position with increased responsibilities
that will require specialized training to acquire knowledge and skills to efficiently execute
the role (Saville, Dall’Ora & Griffiths 2020). The training can be gradually accomplished after
the first three months after assuming the new role to avoid waste of resources. Professional
development helps staff to continue their competency in their profession and motivates
nurses to attain excellence (Saville, Dall’Ora & Griffiths 2020). Moreover, professional
development ensures that staff stays up to date on relevant information and knowledge
adds a valuable asset to the quality of care.

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Balancing life and work for professional mothers poses a critical challenge for
working parents with younger children that require hands-on care. By accommodating the
personal and professional needs of staff nurses by creating an altered schedule makes a
favorable working environment that enhances the coordination of professional and family
responsibilities (Kim 2020). For example, some health care facility has created a flexible
schedule that can run from 9 am to 2 pm that accommodates the unique needs of nurses.
Many health care facilities are moving away from conventional 12- hour shifts to give staff
nurses the options that best suit their personal obligation that ensures a healthy work-life
balance that promotes retention and satisfaction rates (Kim, 2020).
Although the nursing shortage may be an insurmountable predicament, it is
necessary to implement interventions to slowly remedy the continuing nursing shortage.
Health care facilities must endorse an unorthodox approach to recruitment and retention to
resolve the problem. Nurse leaders have pivotal roles in inaugurating strategies that reduce
the impact of the nursing shortage in the health care industry.

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