LAPC Nursing Discussion

Please respond to two peer posts. Please include what you liked about the post, agreed with, and add a reference.

This was the initial discussion question: The United States and other countries are experiencing nursing shortages. To help ease the shortage, many resources are spent on recruiting foreign nurses.

• What are the reasons for these shortages? If the United States and other industrial nations put their resources into increasing nurse retention, would the need to recruit foreign nurses decrease? Why or why not?
• Choose one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and discuss how a community nurse can work toward achieving that goal.

Peer 1:Hello Class,

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend with their friends and families. In this week’s discussion we will be covering the topic of nursing shortages. The topic of nursing shortages has recently been exacerbated as a result of the covid 19 pandemic’s global impact on healthcare systems. In addition many nurses have left the field entirely as a result which has impacted the ability of hospitals to properly staff units thus creating unsafe environments for our patients.

• What are the reasons for these shortages? If the United States and other industrial nations put their resources into increasing nurse retention, would the need to recruit foreign nurses decrease? Why or why not?

Registered Nursing is one of the most sought after careers in the job landscape, but despite this there are still many positions in the profession that are left unfilled. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics states “194,500 average annual openings for registered nurses between 2020 and 2030, with employment projected to grow 9%” (The U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022). Prior to the covid 19 pandemic the topic of nursing shortages was already being discussed among those in the healthcare system. Many of the problems surrounding the topic of nursing shortages are because of a combination of simple yet complex factors. These include the amount of retirements outpacing new entrants to the field, increased demand for healthcare with an aging population, and inadequate workforce support. In addition the onset of a global pandemic exacerbated these factors to an unprecedented scale with the demand for registered nurses rapidly increasing, and the exposure of the issues registered nurses face in the workplace. In order to combat these problems the American Nurses Association (ANA) has listed guidelines to resolving this issue which aims at “Building an adequate supply of nurses, creating safe, empowering and healthy work environment, public policy that supports quality healthcare, laws and regulations that enable nurses to practice at the full extent of their education and licensure” (ANA, 2022). If the United States and other industrial nations were to put their resources into increasing nurse retention the need to recruit foreign nurses would slowly decrease. As mentioned previously the need for foreign nurses would slowly decrease because it takes time to train registered nurses, and we would be required to have a steady influx of foreign nurses to maintain the healthcare needs of our population.

• Choose one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and discuss how a community nurse can work toward achieving that goal.

The sustainable development goal (SDG) that first comes to mind is good health and well-being. This means the ability to ensure healthy lives for our populations and promote healthy living at all age levels. In order to achieve this goal one of the primary issues we face is lack of health care workers. A community nurse can work towards achieving this goal by becoming involved with programs that boost interest in the nursing profession. This could be completed by hosting seminars about local nursing programs to prospective students, and the many benefits that come with the fulfilling career of nursing. By increasing public interest in the healthcare field we can hopefully outpace the rate of retiring nurses to newly graduated registered nurses.

Peer 2: The United States and other countries are experiencing nursing shortages. To help ease the shortage, many resources are spent on recruiting foreign nurses.

• What are the reasons for these shortages? If the United States and other industrial nations put their resources into increasing nurse retention, would the need to recruit foreign nurses to decrease? Why or why not?

There are many causes of nursing shortages. Some examples are nurse burnout, the aging workforce, the aging population, region, growth of population, career vs. family, and violence in the healthcare setting (Haddad et al., 2022). We are all familiar with nurse burnout and female nursing leaving to have families, but some things we probably didn’t think about or are less discussed are the violence in healthcare and the aging population of patients and staff. We all hear about how beat down nurses are by burnout and understaffing, but other things get to us that patients are responsible for. Unfortunately, emotional or physical abuse has taken a toll on nursing staff for a while but is rarely spoken about. Unfortunately, the administration doesn’t do much to defend the nurses, so they are leaving.

Burnout is a big one. Many nurses leave staff positions because they feel they are undervalued by their hospitals and take travel positions that make well over the salary of a staff nurse. Travel nursing has been around for a very long time; it just had heightened attention due to the Covid pandemic.

The aging workforce is a big issue as well. Many of the current workforce is older than 50 years old, meaning they will be ready for retirement in the next 10 to 15 years (Haddad et al., 2022). Lucky for us, we will learn from their experience, and then they retire as we promote but hopefully, there are as many new grads as retiring. Hopefully, none of those adopt the “eating their young” policy and help grow a kind and caring preceptee instead. They need to remember that these are the nurses who will be taking care of them once they retire.

If hospitals put more effort into nurse retention, they wouldn’t need to recruit foreign nurses. If the administration collaborated with staff and paid them what they were worth (especially the loyal hard workers), made an effort to protect staff from physical and emotional abuse, and worked with staff who wanted a family and to work, it would resolve a lot of issues of why the staff is leaving in the first place.

• Choose one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and discuss how a community nurse can work toward achieving that goal.

I think Sustainable Development Goal #5, gender equality, is a good starting point. As discussed earlier, many women leave the workforce to have a family because the two currently don’t fit together well. There can be many options of offering daycare at the hospitals worked at and longer leave to bond with the baby. The US only gives 6 weeks for vaginal delivery or 8 weeks for c-section, then 12 weeks of bonding time. It is a discriminatory policy in the workforce that manifests gender inequality. That is not enough time. Dads should also be offered more time to bond. A labor and delivery or pediatric nurse can easily lobby for these.

Gender inequality toward women and girls greatly reduces chances for economic and educational independence, impacting health, damaging well-being, and decreasing lifespan; yet, promoting women’s economic development has been shown to improve the economic development of countries and businesses (Sensor et al., 2021). Empowering women in the workforce would increase the female role in leadership positions.