Nurse Executive and the Impact of Nursing Shortage and Economic Crisis

A NURSE EXECUTIVE 'S STRATEGY IN APPROACHING

NURSING SHORTAGE AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS

For the last 10 years , healthcare around the world has been plagued with a shortage of nurses that would provide quality care to patients (Auerbach et al , 2007 . Health systems analysts have estimated that this nursing shortage will continue to worsen until the year 2020 . It has been projected that despite the increase in the nurse hiring since 2001 , there is no substantial evidence that points towards the end of the nursing shortage dilemma . National surveys have shown that

approximately 80 of the hospitals in the United States are not supported with enough nurses . The average age of the current nursing population is at 47 years old and thus it can be projected that during the period 2011 to 2020 , almost half of these nurses would have retired or preparing for retirement . It is thus critical that the number of retiring nurses be replenished with a new batch of nurses . However there are not enough nurses that join the workforce and thus the quality of healthcare is most likely to suffer

Another reason for the nursing shortage is that these healthcare professionals have gone to other fields of profession , or simply stopped practicing in their field of training (Doiron et al , 2008 . There are several reasons behind this choice . It has been reported that there are quite a number of nurses who feel that they do not experience a sense of professional growth since they continue to...