The Future of Nursing
Nursing Shortage, Cultural Diversity and Nursing Education
The global shortage of nurses and midwives as at 2014 was estimated to be nine million by the World Bank and WHO, with a further drop predicted to be 7.6million by 2030 (Drennan and Ross, 2019). Nursing shortage describes; the low number of the workforce compared to the demand (low staffing), the inability to find or fill the vacancies. Hospitals with higher patient-nurse ratios translate to higher patient morbidity and mortality. With the projected growth in population, the issue of nursing shortage will have to be addressed for quality health delivery.
The nursing staff in their area of practice, provide healthcare to patients of different cultural background; age, gender, religion, language, ethnicity, and cultural beliefs. To ensure sufficient delivery of healthcare and advancement in nursing, nurses will have to ensure that they do not overstep or overlook the patients’ cultural orientation and create a rapport with patients. Cases of transfers, and getting of jobs in new regions, nurses will have to cope, learn and blend within the unique cultural set-up. Therefore nurses have to be culturally competent to work within the diverse cultural world (Gillson and Cherian, 2019).
The future presents itself with new challenges especially in the healthcare system, the best way for the nurses to cope is to advance their education, from the objective basis that it was to a skill-based and specialization to ensure sufficient health delivery (McEwen, M., Wills, E. 2018). Restructuring the nursing education structure to encompass the future expected trends such as palliative care, will ensure that there is quality health delivery which equipped with the required nursing specialists.