Nursing Shortage

Nursing Shortage

Introduction section

Staff shortage is one of the significant factors affecting US healthcare and remains one of the significant barriers to nursing practice (Tourangeau et al., 2017). The relationship between nurses’ shortage and working environment has been discussed for many years. However, the correlation is still high and positive, as many issues about the working environment of nurses have not been solved. The shortage of nurses is associated with the current overwork of workers, leading to reduced productivity. It has been claimed that the lack of experienced registered nurses can lead to medication errors, infections, patient falls, and sometimes death (Guo et al., 2018). In other cases, staff shortages are associated with high readmission rates because of the strained service quality provided by a small number of available nurses. According to many types of research that have been done on the issues, public health facilities ought to invest more in improving the working environment for nurses as a strategy to curb the problem of the nursing shortage. Others argue that a strategy that improves the retention of employees is more effective in reducing shortage. The following is a literature review that involves a comparison of the selected eight studies that have been considered to be more relevant to the topic at hand.

A comparison of research questions

Abou Hashish (2017) sought to find out whether there was a correlation between how the nurses perceived their working environment, their satisfaction in their job, and their performance and commitment to the health facility. In comparison, Nantsupawat et al. (2017) asked whether there was an association between burnout, job dissatisfaction, and intention to leave the job. The study questions by Tourangeau et al. (2017) were on the factors that influence nurses to choose to continue working in-home care while those by Copeland & Chambers (2017) were focused on the changes that unit design can have on nurses’ job satisfaction and intentions to continue working in the environment. On the other hand, Er & Sökmen (2018) sought to investigate the perception of nurses working in public facilities in a friendly working environment. In comparison, Moloney et al. (2018) were determined to investigate the improvements required in New Zealand hospitals to reduce burn out and curb short staffing. Similarly, Guo et al. (2018) asked on the main metrics of burnout, and it’s their main predictors and how they affect the nurses’ resilience. Wurie, Samai, & Witter (2016) investigate the challenges in the working environment of public facilities in rural areas and whether retention strategies could curb the nursing shortage.

A comparison of sample populations

In Abou Hashish (2017), the authors used three big hospitals in Alexandria governorate and included all nurses in the inpatient units, which amounted to 500 participants. In comparison, Nantsupawat et al. (2017) sampled 1351 nurses from five university hospitals in Thailand. On the other hand, the participants in the study by Tourangeau et al. (2017) were nurses from homecare facilities in Canada and Ontario While Chambers’s study (2017) involved a 224-bed health facility and all the registered nurses under the hospital. Er & Sökmen (2018) targeted a population of 735 nurses working in three different public hospitals from where a sample of 460 was drawn.  Moloney et al. (2018) did the study in New Zeland and engaged 2910 nurses as participants in the study. In comparison, Guo et al. (2018) study involved a sample population of 1061 nurses drawn from 6 various hospitals in Hunan province in China. Among all the reviewed studies, Wurie, Samai, & Witter (2016) used the smallest sample size of 23 individuals who were selected through systematic sampling.

A comparison of the limitations of the study

A shortage of participants limited Wurie, Samai, & Witter (2016). According to the authors, the study was also limited by unavailability of the chosen participants due to professional duties. They recommended more research to be done on the topic by using bigger samples and allocating enough time for the study. Nantsupawat et al. (2017), (Guo et al., 2018), and Tourangeau et al. (2017) had three common limitations. The methodology that is the cross-sectional design did not allow recognize casual relationships.

Furthermore, the studies were conducted in Thailand and Ontario and Canada, respectively, and hence the sample was only convenient to the stated locations not representative enough.  Furthermore, the results of the studies could not be generalized to other populations like the US. Authors of both studies recommended that there is a necessity for a study that has wider geographical coverage. The methodology limited studies that used questionnaires as a method to collect data. Questionnaires fail to rely on the reasoning behind the answers and only allow the researcher to investigate existence of a certain phenomenon but does not allow for an explanation of the factors underlying the phenomenon.  Scholars recommended that a study be done that investigates how the working environment influence nurses’ career decisions and reduce the nursing shortage.

A conclusion section, incorporating recommendations for further research

The studies had different research questions, but they were all focused on investigating the association between working environment, job satisfaction, and intention to continue working and nursing shortage. The sample population in most studies was big and well distributed such that certain conclusions can be made about particular areas. All the studies were limited, such that they could not be used to make conclusions about the current US population. Most of the studies were limited by the methodology and selection of the study population. However, all the studies made almost the same conclusion; the working environment should be improved as a strategy to encourage retention and curb the nursing shortage. With references to the findings of the studies and the recommendations from the authors, a more relevant and valid study can be founded and developed.

References

Copeland, D., & Chambers, M. (2017). Effects of unit design on acute care nurses’ walking distances, energy expenditure, and job satisfaction: A pre–post-relocation study. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 10(4), 22-36.

Er, F., & Sökmen, S. (2018). Investigation of the working conditions of nurses in public hospitals on the basis of nurse-friendly hospital criteria. International journal of nursing sciences, 5(2), 206-212.

Guo, Y. F., Luo, Y. H., Lam, L., Cross, W., Plummer, V., & Zhang, J. P. (2018). Burnout and its association with resilience in nurses: A cross‐sectional study. Journal of clinical nursing, 27(1-2), 441-449.

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.

Moloney, W., Gorman, D., Parsons, M., & Cheung, G. (2018). How to keep registered nurses working in New Zealand even as economic conditions improve. Human resources for health, 16(1), 45.

Nantsupawat, A., Kunaviktikul, W., Nantsupawat, R., Wichaikhum, O. A., Thienthong, H., & Poghosyan, L. (2017). Effects of nurse work environment on job dissatisfaction, burnout, intention to leave. International nursing review, 64(1), 91-98.

Tourangeau, A. E., Patterson, E., Saari, M., Thomson, H., & Cranley, L. (2017). Work-related factors influencing home care nurses intent to remain employed. Health care management review, 42(1), 87-97.

Wurie, H. R., Samai, M., & Witter, S. (2016). Retention of health workers in rural Sierra Leone: findings from life histories. Human resources for health, 14(1), 3.