Nursing Shortages Have Big Impacts

By Addie Haun

The healthcare industry is experiencing nursing shortages locally and nationwide. This problem heavily impacts many people’s daily lives since nurses are necessary to healthcare; without nurses in hospitals, doctor’s offices, walk-in clinics and home health, people cannot get the proper treatment they need.

The growing shortage of nurses in healthcare systems both locally and nationwide is increasing health care costs, policy reforms, as well as impacting patient care quality.

The biggest reasons for this huge nursing shortage are burnout, the COVID- 19 pandemic, and violence in healthcare settings. The burnout for working nurses comes from  the hassle of bedside nursing and being underpaid, while also having to take care of more patients than is safe.

According to the Vivian health web-journal, “Nurses leaving the bedside include burnout, unsafe staffing ratios, inadequate support staff, being underpaid and unappreciated, and inadequate days off for mental health.”

Workplace violence is also startlingly common in the nursing field, with Vivian continuing on to state that workers in healthcare settings are “5 times more likely to sustain an injury due to workplace violence” when compared to  other professions.  Violence in healthcare remains a large problem for nurses. 

To make improvements in this shortage, experts say that the United States need to take steps to improve every one of these issues within the healthcare industry, taking action instead of overlooking the problems at hand.

The biggest setback to progress is the problem of burnout, as it increases the more the shortage grows; there are many jobs opening locally and nationally due to the shortage, yet they are not getting adequately filled.

Vivian predicts a shortage of “200,000 to 450,000 Registered Nurses for direct patient care by 2025.” Many current nurses will now only do direct patient care due to the burnout from bedside nursing, and many will leave their workplaces due to the amount of pressure that is on them to save lives or find diagnoses.

People often forget that nurses are people and can only handle so much work mentally and physically.

The ongoing nursing shortages are affecting patient care, policy reforms, and increasing costs for healthcare. To address this issue there needs to be better working conditions, a policy that lets nurses have a mental health day, and a lot more appreciation both locally and nationally.

We can all take steps to improve the shortage and demand of healthcare needs, as nursing is essential for patient care and the healthcare field as a whole. The better the conditions are for the nurses doing these important jobs, the better the conditions of those who come in for their help all around the nation and the world.