Nursing scholarships, male nursing grants,Nursing Scholarships, Nursing grants,Male Nursing Scholarships

The Impact of the Global Nursing Shortage

Despite the fact that the world boasts a nursing population of somewhere around 12 million, there is a chronic shortage of nurses all over the world. This lack of skilled medical care is felt distinctly in third world countries, especially.

Causes of the Nursing Shortage

There are a number of reasons for the global nursing shortage. First of all, there is a lack of good training resources for the nursing profession. Often the conditions that nurses have to work in are exceedingly poor, as well. Additionally, there is a significantly large portion of the nursing population that is aging, which means that older nurses are leaving the profession through retirement, leaving behind a void that is not being filled as quickly by those new to the nursing profession.

Another cause of the shortage in nursing has developed due to the fact that there are a greater number of differing and unique employment opportunities for women nowadays. Since women comprise the majority of nurses, this has impacted the field greatly.

In the United States, the rise of managed care was a large contributor to the nursing shortage. Insurance companies were not reimbursing for nursing expenses, and so nurses were having difficulty working in the industry that sometimes thwarted their involvement.

Problem Areas

Globally, the hardest hit areas include both Africa and Southeast Asia. The surge of people becoming infected with HIV/AIDS has created difficulty in finding enough nurses to care for those sick and dying individuals in endemic areas.

Another issue globally is the migration of skilled nurses from hard hit areas in third world countries moving to better locations in first world countries. These positions pay better and the areas provide a better quality of living for the nurses, so it is understandable that they would want to migrate in large numbers to conceivably better places.

Some locations, such as Central and South America, actually have more physicians than nurses. This can be devastating to local populations, as doctors rely greatly on the medical support of nurses in their fields to care for patients. Without skilled nurses, the incidences of morbidity increase greatly. In Central and South America as well, there are so many populations in remote areas that are difficult to access, and it is even harder for nurses to work there or get there.

One of the biggest problems internationally with the nursing population and shortage is that nurses, being predominantly female, are often discriminated against for being female. Nursing is considered to be “women’s work” and beneath most males. This cultural phenomenon is absolutely a worldwide one, and until ideas about women in the workforce and nursing change, it is likely that this will continue to prevent women from becoming nurses and keep contributing to the global shortage of nurses.

When you combine all of these factors together, you can see that because there are so many, it is understandable that there is and continues to be a global nursing shortage. Hopefully as more time passes, this may begin to change.

Most related article:

1). Nursing shortage in the united states

The Nursing Shortage In America Could Be Hazardous To Your Health

Nurses make up the largest group of medical professionals in health care today. Everyone has required the services of a nurse at least once in their lifetime. Nurses are present during a birth, and in every other aspect of our lives. There’s the school nurse you saw because you were pancaked on the asphalt by an overeager eighth grader during a game of keep away, there’s the nurse who comes to see you right before the doctor does, the one who takes your vitals and chats with you about your family. Nurses are in every aspect of our lives, ready to assist us in getting back on our feet when we need it.

There will be 1.1 million job openings next year in the field of nursing. A recent report notes with some alarm that the United States is suffering from a critical shortage of nursing professionals. Nurse to patient ratios are plummeting in thirty states, forcing many institutions to either close or run seriously understaffed. Neither choice is viable, and facilities have been turning people away.

While most emergency rooms have been so far able to keep this problem at bay, other parts of the medical profession suffer as nurses turn to specialties, and other more profitable careers. A lot of students entering college do not even consider nursing a viable career choice anymore.

Only the very dedicated take up the profession anymore. Unless something is done to change the status quot, this problem is only going to get worse for all of us. So much of our lives would change if there weren’t nurses available. The quality of medical care will continue to worsen.

Considering the demands of their careers, nurses should be paid much more for what they do. A country that can pay some guy a million dollars to hit a baseball, should be able to offer more to the people who do more for them. It is a sad thing to see, and something should be done to change it.

What this country should be doing instead of fighting wars, is trying to find a way to make the nursing profession more attractive to students considering college. As stated before, nurses don’t get nearly enough for what they do. It’s time America started appreciating her nurses before the nursing shortage in America becomes an epidemic.

View more related article:

1). Nursing shortage by state

Jobless New RN’s, Immigration And The Global Nursing Shortage

Despite global nursing shortage, the new nursing graduates in the US often find it difficult to get hired. Most of the nursing jobs which are open require that candidates have at least one year of nursing experience – something which new graduate nurses do not have. Although there are plenty of jobs waiting to be filled, new graduate nurses aren’t qualified for most of them.

Very few employers are willing to hire new grads because they are more expensive to train. Their lack of experience requires they be supervised by a preceptor, and with the current global nursing shortage and the high turnover rate of staff, rarely is an experienced nurse available to take on the additional duties of training a new nurse.

Rather than investing the time and resources in these newly minted nursing graduates from US schools, many cost-conscious employers are opting to hire foreign trained nurses who already have experience in the field. Despite there being a global nursing shortage, employers are willing to recruit nurses from other countries to help meet the demand for nurses who already have experience.

Foreign nurses who migrate to the US site the higher salaries being offered to them as compared to what they are making in their native countries and the wider range of job opportunities for both themselves and their families as reasons for making the move. Immigration of foreign nurses is a side effect of the global nursing shortage which leads to a phenomenon referred to as “brain drain,” where those with the best education are leaving their native countries.

There are no easy solutions to the global nursing shortage. As schools in the US are increasing enrollment and educating more nurses, if new graduates are unable to gain on-the-job experience, the demand for professionally trained candidates who are eligible to fill the job openings available will continue to be greater than the supply.

Recruiting foreign trained nurses may be a temporary, less expensive solution in the short-term, but the resulting “brain drain” of the nurses’ native countries will likely exacerbate the international nursing shortage further.