Addressing Nursing Shortage

Key Areas to Address

Solutions for addressing proposed nursing shortage in resource limited health settings must account for the changing needs of care that traces the shortages to lapses in past needs that failed to develop strategies for managing them. Important distinctions should be made between the traditional role of manager, and the managed, and between the work environment and home. In addition, there is need to embrace modern technology to reduce the backlog of care by redefining the way work is done. Again, it is important to consider that the labor market faces stiffer competition, with hospitals competing more to hire and retain the best staff, which should put in place the best conditions to retain workers. We therefore need to offer bonuses to employees who sign longer contracts with the hospital. We must also offer lucrative benefits like tuition reimbursements to encourage those who wants to further their education to be able to do so. These measures will allow us to compete with other hospitals for competent staff.

 Hywowitz (2000) points at important trends to be considered in managing the nursing shortages that continues to evolve over time. First, remuneration should be given utmost consideration given that employees today balance between the value of   personal time and the pay. Second, balancing professional and personal roles requires employees to be allowed to be active both at work and at home, and should not be allowed to choose between the two. Third, there is need to raise high cadre staff who should be provided with conducive working environment, and allowed enough  time to participate in informal groups that suites their roles. Fourth, integrating home and work roles offer employees more freedom to handle their professional and personal lives (Couig & Kelley, 2012).

Fifth, provides for accounting for different employees needs based on ages and preferences, which has been found to give nurses autonomy, particularly when dealing with generation X employees who prefer greater autonomy and reduced bureaucracy. In fact, some employees opt for working independently which can be incorporated in temporary healthcare settings. Last, nursing shortages can be addressed through collaborative management, which increases the functions of teams by eliminating hierarchy. The arrangement allows workers autonomy to work in teams that are supervised by the manager (Couig & Kelley, 2012).

Poor Job satisfaction

Poor job satisfaction affects workers in many ways, and can adversely impair their output and commitment to goals.  A study published by the international Achieves of occupational Health found workers who reported low job satisfaction as likely to experience several other issues that affected negatively on their work.  Four areas contributing to poor job satisfaction includes job related stress, poor morale, lack of productivity, and high employees turn over (Riggio, 2015).

 Job related stress occurs when employees are not happy with their jobs, which may cause them to experience or report stress on the job. Employees who are happy at work are less likely to report feeling stressed out by their jobs.  The nature of nursing jobs exposes employees to long working hours which when not balanced may cause burnouts and aggravate the situation (Riggio, 2015).

Second, poor job moral concerns employees who may feel miserable at their work because of sharing experiences with other employees with negative attitudes. The effects of this   spread quickly at the work place, which must be remedied quickly to prevent them from affecting the overall morale at the work place (Riggio, 2015).

Third relates to lack of productivity, which often accompanies   low job satisfaction and in turn may create high turnover among employees. Employees are not likely to remain in jobs that they do not enjoy doing; hence, managers are challenged to find ways of motivating employees to retain high quality staff (Riggio, 2015).

Fourth relates to low job satisfaction resulting from high employees turn over, which sooner causes employees to quit jobs they earlier enjoyed doing. This presents a challenge to companies, which may want to retain the highly qualified staff, and managers are encouraged to find new ways of increasing job satisfaction.