The COVID post-pandemic distress has left the healthcare system staring at an uncertain future because, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States is heading for a critical shortfall, peaking 193,100 nursing positions within a few years. A crisis is looming where the demand for nursing infrastructure will outstrip the supply. The calamity can only be reversed with nursing shortage solutions that follow an unconventional hands-on approach.

Exactly why is a nursing professional so much in demand?

The registered nurse is indispensable in providing healthcare in hospitals, physicians’ offices, outpatient care centers, and sophisticated nursing facilities. Additionally, nurses are needed in behavioral health facilities, specialized clinics, schools, universities, and private institutions. Finding solutions to nursing shortage is vital to our health outcomes and improving the population’s health.

Road Mapping the Nursing Shortage in the US

Covid-19 stretched healthcare services, with nurses bearing the burden of mounting pressure. High attrition levels compounded the problem of lower employment rates. Vacancies zoomed to 30 per cent in nursing staffing, the highest between 2020 and 2021, creating a national crisis.

One of the critical nurse shortage solutions emerges when you consider the rise to prominence of Travel Nurses, who are registered nurses working in understaffed hospitals at higher pay. Regular nurses got drawn to temporary but high-paying jobs, thereby ballooning Travel Nursing by 35 per cent in 2020, booming to 40 per cent by the end of 2021. Improved working conditions and higher pay could improve skilling and availability of such workers.

Adversity has affected even nurses of color, with patients refusing their care. Color-based and ethnic discrimination, though not a new development, is mainly riding on skewed or misguided perceptions of COVID-19’s origins. Awareness programs will be critical in dispelling wrong notions and encouraging diversity in medi-care services. 

Demographically, our enhanced life expectancy and the aging of the baby boom generation are crucial factors feeding the nursing shortage. The number of professionally qualified nurses declined from 69 per 1,000 in 2003 to 62 per 1,000 in 2021. When we ponder solutions to the nursing shortage, it’s pertinent to remember that the higher education sector needs more funding and better infrastructure for churning out new nurses. 

Solution to nursing shortage that turns the tide and addresses demand -The unconventional approach

As the nation grapples with a severe nursing shortage, it’s time to think out of the box, and some of the best solutions are anchored in the direct hire nursing agency that becomes an invaluable resource in mitigating the following issues underpinning the nursing shortage.

Tackling discrimination in the Nursing profession

Nurses of color formed 31 percent of the medical workforce in 2021, a marked improvement from merely 16 percent in the 1970’s. This diversity must be encouraged because under-resourced and economically displaced communities and people are more likely to trust and communicate with more ethnically diverse staff. 

Nurses of color are also more likely to service rural and far-removed communities. Wage discrimination disadvantages women of color in this profession, and bringing more wage equity will level the playing field and attract more candidates. 

Easing the educational pathway to Nursing

Education is viewed as the biggest bottleneck in solving the nursing shortage. One of the significant and timely solutions for the nursing shortage comes from a closer review of Associate degree in Nursing (ADN). Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and ADN are the main pathways for nursing recruitment.

BSN is the favored degree for progressing to management roles, furthering graduate education, and initiating a nursing speciality. A disproportionately bigger number of community colleges offer BSN degrees than ADN. BSN candidates command higher wages, too. 

The ADN pipeline remains the more affordable degree with a greater intake of a diverse student population. If the ADN degree-bestowing infrastructure is expanded, we automatically increase the size and diversity of the nursing pipeline, solving the nursing shortage.

By inducting more diverse faculty in higher education institutions, we will ease the burden on unrepresented communities in the nursing sector.

Lower capacity in educational institutions is why more nurses can’t be trained. Experts say that in the 2020-21 academic year, more than 66,000 qualified applicants were turned away in BSN programs, leaving a large unutilized workforce pool. Institutions must be equipped to train more nurses to augment the national nursing pool.

The major problems are a shortage of Nursing educators and inadequate campus infrastructure. The solution for nursing shortage lies in incentivizing educators with better salaries to keep the natural talent from opting for higher-paying bedside nursing positions.

The clinical placement shortage

The educator shortage is also driving the shortage of clinical placements where students gain hands-on learning experiences. In the clinical arena, preceptors, and trainers are beset with heavy workloads and noncompetitive pay. Better pay and infrastructure support from academic institutions and employers would encourage more registered nurses to join as preceptors.

The growing reality is that health care services are moving into rural communities, behavioral health institutions, private health clinics, primary care centers, specialized nursing homes, schools, and even people’s homes. The conundrum of how to solve nursing shortage is best answered by rewarding nursing students to move to rural, remote, or frontier regions with improved accessibility options.

Conclusion

It took the Covid 19 pandemic to shake the United States out of its decades-old stupor when it struggled to maintain an adequate and effective nursing force to tackle the shortage of medical professionals head-on.

The inescapable truth is that the healthcare sector needs massive federal funding in a coordinated nationwide endeavor to mitigate nursing shortages and hasten healthcare institutions’ ability to respond faster to COVID-like emergencies.

The more ambitious effort of policymakers to solve the nursing shortage should involve creating better racial equality in job opportunities enabling ethnic diversity to spread equitable access to high-quality, well-paying nursing services. 

Better nursing services will create a healthier population keyed to better education, lifestyles, and outcomes, building stronger communities.