The Nursing Shortage and Poor Job Satisfaction Leading to Turnover

The healthcare institutions all over the country are continually battling numerous conflicting priorities. Most people are of the view that hospitals must continue focusing on ensuring patient safety, maintaining hospital security, preventing infections, delivering high-quality patient care- all with overstretched resources. The two major issues that affect the healthcare institution include the staff shortage and poor job satisfaction leading to the turnover.

Nursing Shortage

The nursing shortage in the healthcare sector has been identified as a huge problem. The problem has affected the healthcare and professions in general. The increasing shortage is threatening the provision of effective patient care services (Kawakita, 2015). The nursing shortage being witnessed in the world today is prospected to worsen in the near future as the aging population continues to demand better care yet majority of the committed nurses are approaching the retirement age. Most of the younger persons have developed a negative attitude about the profession a factor that contributed to the reduced number of professionals in this field. The available young and skilled nurses with the capacity of handling the modern day equipment are inadequate to cover the entire healthcare needs.

Poor Job Satisfaction Leading In Turnover

The job dissatisfaction among the nurses is one of the major contributors to risk to patients, turnover, and costly disputes. Higher burnout and job dissatisfaction are high among the nurses who directly care directly care of patients in the nursing homes and hospitals when compared to those working in the working in other white collar places. Most dissatisfied nurses tend to offer poor services to patients. Improving the working conditions of nurses might have a positive impact on the patients’ satisfaction and quality of care.

The Impact of the Issue

The severe nursing shortage being witnessed by the facility continues to cause difficulties for the consumers and healthcare providers. The nurse shortage continues to have a negative impact on the healthcare system and the country. Examples include increased length of patient stay, increases in failure to rescue and increased hospital-related mortality. The shortage of nurses might have a long-term impact on the quality of care. For instance, the nurse shortage can be linked to decreased family and resident satisfaction and increased job turnover. Each of the adverse outcomes affects the entire quality of care that is offered in long-term care facilities.

When the nurses leave the healthcare sector they lead to a vacancy that affects the overall costs of operations. The vacancy might also be costly to other nurses who can experience burnout because of being forced to work for an extended period of time. The costs that are associated with filling the vacancies include hiring third-party staffing firms, application tracking systems, and employing in-house recruiters (Nardi & Gyurko, 2013). The major reasons why nurses leave their job can be involuntary or voluntary. Some of the top causes include burnout, retirement, salary, promotion, and personal matters. In addition, the nurses might leave the workforce because they want to return to school or they are dissatisfied with their job. The higher number of job opportunities can increase the rate of employee turnover because of the nurses who are dissatisfied can easily find other employment avenues.

Describe How Improved Collaboration, Communication, and Teamwork Can Improve the Condition in the Department

Collaboration, communication, and teamwork are imperative components for providing quality care to the patients. When nurses work as a team and communicate with each other, they are likely to share their experience and find common solutions to some of the problems that affect them, which can lead to reduced turnover. Collaboration and teamwork are essentially important to the department because of the decentralized health system with numerous levels of health workers. Teams can work together to reduce the level of burnout by collaborating on various tasks that were originally done by one nurse. Effective communication among nurses is crucial for collaboration on patient care.

How to Foster Inclusion and Improve Collaboration and Communication

The Facility Should Prioritize Inclusive Leadership

Inclusive managers and leaders engage a much more effective in a wide range of attitudinally, demographically, and culturally diverse employees. The administration can be open to a broader spectrum of perspectives and ideas which can improve the decision making and the ability to anticipate the future, handle uncertainty, and innovate (Chang, 2017). The manager who demonstrates behavior such as cultural intelligence and curiosity tend to create a culture that encourages inclusivity.

Streamlining the Process

The absence of goals is the factor that is likely to affect employees’ retention and hamper collaboration and communication in the facility. Breaking down the organizational silos can enable the workers to reach out with valuable feedback and suggestions that can streamline the organizational processes. If the proposal is implemented, the employees can feel they are part of the team. The organization ought to ask the team to come up with better ideas around streamlining the process. Brainstorming can improve collaboration and communication among the entire organization.

References

Chang, H. (2017). Does leadership matter? Study of leadership style, job performance, and job satisfaction. Poslovna Ekonomija, 11(2), 1-28. doi: 10.5937/poseko12-16191

Kawakita, T. (2015). Association between job characteristics and job satisfaction in nurses. Journal Of Nursing & Care, 04(05). doi: 10.4172/2167-1168.c1.014

Nardi, D., & Gyurko, C. (2013). The Global Nursing Faculty Shortage: Status and Solutions for Change. Journal Of Nursing Scholarship, n/a-n/a. doi: 10.1111/jnu.12030