How nursing shortages affect the industry in long-term
Nursing staff shortage has been a challenge for the healthcare industry for decades, but COVID-19 marks the extremities in this issue. Due to the nursing shortages, there is an increase in the unfilled nursing positions. You cannot deny the fact that these shortages continue to rise after COVID-19 and are expected to get worse. Let’s explore the problem in-depth by overviewing the effects of nursing shortages in a long term:
Increasing Mortality Rate
Lack of enough healthcare professionals in healthcare organizations and hospitals has raised the concerning issue of the increasing rate of mortality in patients. There are many studies that show the correlation between staff shortage and mortality rate, especially done by NCBI.
It is also observed that sufficiently staffed healthcare institutes show comparatively lower mortality rates than poorly staffed ones. The patients with special needs might not be taken care of due to insufficient staff and their health deteriorates.
Staff Burnout
The common problem that emerges due to the lack of enough staff is that the existing staff is overworked and so the patients are overlooked. Not only do the nurses feel overworked and burdened by the workload in odd shift timing, but they also tend to leave the healthcare institute for a better one or even quit the nursing profession. After, COVID-19 the number of patients have increased while the number of nurses has decreased. Nurses have to work overtime to manage such a large inpatient number due to the shortage of staff that ultimately results in burnout. Working for longer hours nurses have no energy to maintain the quality of care that patients expect. It is human to make errors when you cannot function properly. With work stress, fatigue, and tiredness nursing staff tends to provide below-average quality of care.
Quality of Care has declined
Quality care is the only thing patients and their families expect in exchange for their hard-earned money. People have their hopes attached to healthcare institutions. If healthcare organizations turned out to be inefficient in taking care of the patients or simply not providing the value they pay for, people will stop trusting them. The nursing shortage has resulted in a decline in the quality of care. No matter how qualified, experienced, and well-trained nurses are, when overworked they will feel exhausted and unable to provide the same level of quality care as they would when fresh. Although healthcare institutes acknowledge the problem and try to compensate with better training facilities, it is not enough to address the nursing shortage.
Healthcare institutes need to hire sufficient nursing staff to maintain quality care. If the nursing jobs remain unfilled and healthcare professionals are loaded with extra work it is impossible to meet the demands and expectations of the patients. The mortality rate has to come down and quality care needs to be delivered, as these are the two things people want from healthcare organizations.
