Reflective Essay

 
Reflective Essay
While practicing as an intern nurse at a local hospital, I faced a difficult situation when there were 4 emergency patients who had arrived in the hospital. At that time, there were only two nurses including me. I felt uncomfortable because of the necessity to address the needs of all the four patients. My colleague was the only experienced nurse in the hospital during the time. The situation highlighted the issue of nurse staffing in hospitals. Most hospitals do not have adequate number of nursing staff to address the needs of patients. In result of this problem, I found myself in a difficult position to deal with all patients effectively.
Shortage of nursing staff is a key issue evident in the above-mentioned situation. Lack of nurses creates a problem of being unable to see all the patients regularly and communicate with them (MacLean et al., 2014). The situation caused by the shortage of nursing staff is a critical issue as it exposes significant underfunding of hospitals.
            The underlying reason for the shortage of nurses in hospitals is the lack of financing to hire more nursing professionals and specialists. The cost of hiring experienced nurses is high and thus, most local hospitals are not able to afford to have a higher nurse to patient ratio. Nursing staff shortage often limits the ability of a local hospital to offer quality health care services. It is necessary to seek more funding that will be implemented to hire qualified nurses in health care facilities.
Personally, I felt that I had let down the patients and that the hospital should have done more to increase the capacity of nurses to assist all the patients effectively. I also thought that patients deserved good health care services from all local hospitals. The government should ensure that any operating local hospital has the capacity to deliver effective nursing services to the patients. However, I believe that local hospitals will find it difficult to increase the capacity of nurses because of the lack of nurses in the labor market.
From ethical perspective, taking responsibility is a key personal belief that impacts my actions. Taking ethical responsibility is an important aspect for all health professionals. I felt that it was my duty and responsibility to deliver effective nursing services to the patients. Health care administrators of hospitals should be able to expand their mandate and efforts to increase the number of nursing staff to help with the delivery of quality health care services (MacLean et al., 2014). As such, I felt a huge sense of guilt and responsibility being unable to deliver care to all the patients in the emergency unit.
Numerous examples of empirical nursing literature highlight the need to deal with nursing shortage in society today. According to McKechnie (2016), the U.S. is expected to experience a significant shortage of registered nurses as the need for health care services grows significantly. Moreover, nursing schools in the country are unable to meet the increasing demand for health care services. Ageing population of nurses has become higher increasing the number of nurses leaving the health care sector. According to Richardson (2018), the government should expand funding on nursing education to increase the capacity of colleges to admit more students into the nursing profession. The government should make more efforts to increase the number of training courses available to all student nurses. As such, the courses will contribute to reduce the long-term shortage of nurses in the health care industry.
            From the reflective practice, I was able to gain significant insights and information concerning the underlying challenge of nursing shortage in most local hospitals. I learned that most nurses are exhausted because of huge numbers of patients and thus, more efforts should be put up in place to improve nursing education. I believe I have enhanced my understanding of a key nursing issue in society today.





















References
MacLean, L., Hassmiller, S., Shaffer, F., Rohrbaugh, K., Collier, T., & Fairman, J. (2014). Scale, causes, and implications of the primary care nursing shortage. Annual Review of Public Health, 35, 443-457.
McKechnie, T. (2016). Call for nurses: The multi-dimensional manifestation of nursing shortage on patient care. QIHI Journal of Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety, (2).
Richardson, K. (2018). The impact of retiring baby boomers on nursing shortage. The Journal of Global Health Care System, 1(1).

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