« Hints To Prepare For Your Employment Interview | Home | In Need Of Chiropractor Jobs? Start Here For A Stable Job! »
Looking For Nursing Jobs? Start Here For A Great Career Opportunity?
By Sid | October 14, 2008
If you were enrolling in a nurse training program to try and find nurse jobs in the mid to late 1990’s, you probably heard that you were really in for it, training for a difficult jobs- you also probably heard that with all these nurse training schools popping up, it was going to be very hard to get a nursing job, as there just weren’t enough to go around.
Not any more! For a long time, people who studied the healthcare industry said that there might be a reversal of fortune, and there has been. Gradually, care providers such as nursing homes and hospitals, who depended on nurses to operate, came to realize that as nurses left their jobs they were becoming more and more difficult to replace. This has led to a severe shortage in the number of nurses available in the US- and the situation is getting worse. The shortage of qualified nurses is a global problem, meaning that health care providers have to compete on a world-wide scale to fill nursing positions such as nursing home jobs.
The benefit of the shortage, to nurses, will be an improved future work environment, as employers try to better conditions in order to attract quality candidates. However, in the short-term, it’s putting a lot of strain on everyone and may actually exacerbate the frustrations nurses may have, which may cause them to not only leave their jobs but also discourage others from becoming nurses.
In order to ensure that the current crisis in nursing does not continue much further into the future, the two areas of retention and recruitment need to be addressed. This article will take a look at some of the topics that come up among nurses when it comes to addressing these issues.
With up to 40% of the nursing workforce expected to retire over the next 10 years, it’s very important to keep the younger members of the profession happy, so that the current crisis in the field can be halted.
One of the biggest complaints that nurses have long had within the places that they work is that their chosen career path is regarded more as a job than a profession. This is especially true within the medical community, where doctors have traditionally been dismissive of the opinions of nurses, often giving nurses the feeling that they are but cogs to carry out the will of the machine. It has taken a massive depletion of the nursing work force to demonstrate to both other medical professionals and to the public in general that nurses are an integral part of any health care system, worth as much respect as doctors, respiratory technicians, or any other professionals. The public, as well, is increasingly aware of the vital role that nurses play in the area of medicine.
A benefit of the current nursing shortage (if you can consider it a benefit) is that non-nurses are finally starting to realize how rigorous the training and testing processes for becoming an RN are. It takes just as long to become a nurse as it does to earn a B. A., B.S., or any other undergraduate degree!
Another oft-cited concern of professional nurses is that the conditions in their places of work are very poor. In this case, work conditions do not apply to the many different situations a nurse will have to put up with from patients during a course of a day; rather, they concern areas of the job that are directly informed by management policy, such as hours of work, nurse to patient ratio, the use of support staff, and the condition of equipment.
Most nurses in the US work a combination of both day and night shifts. Of course, it’s impossible to run a medical facility without nurses, yet the inconvenience of working a night shift is not currently compensated any differently. One way to increase the attractiveness of the position would be to do as they do in other professions and pay more for workers that take night shifts, and some facilities are already looking at revising work schedules so that night shifts are not as long as day shifts are, with some adding in a “swing” shift.
Continued increases in the budget of the United States government in the area of health care are tagged to help resolve, among other things, the concerns of nurses both with support staff and with equipment. The job of a nurse involves quite a lot of lifting, so it is incredibly important if any nurses are going to make it through to retirement that the equipment available in the hospital eases their burden in this area. Many nurses find that they are also doing duties that are traditionally thought of as the responsibilities of receptionists and orderlies, and in order for nurses to attend to their nursing duties, sooner or later facilities will have to streamline funds so that these support levels are taken care of by staff other than nurses.
The biggest short-term problem facing the industry is the nurse-to-patient ratio. Most facilities are unable to fill vacant positions, and so the ratio remains at a level that many nurses are uncomfortable with. However, efforts to address the issue properly still provide hope.
Recruiting of nurses is the second vital focus for the future of nursing. This milieu will see increasing attempts to train nurses properly, and increased efforts by medical providers to attract good nurses. Those that can’t offer sufficient training and enticements will soon find themselves without enough nurses to run their facilities!
Unfortunately, universities and colleges are not graduating enough nurses quickly enough, to replace those that are leaving the profession. Further complicating things is the fact that many of them are not going to work in traditional nursing workplaces such as hospitals but are instead choosing relatively lower-stress jobs with higher levels of pay such as nursing homes or incarceration facilities.
In order to improve the patient to nurse ratio that is such a common complaint among nurses, it is vital to increase the number of students coming out of nursing schools across the country. Universities and colleges need to have the funding available to create these spaces. In addition, facilities and governments will have to offer programs such as student loan forgiveness programs in order to attract potential students to the profession.
The last decade has seen a massive growth in secondary industries targeted towards nurses. These industries include nursing agencies and travel nursing programs which hire their own nurses and then contract them out to facilities in need. These nurses are generally higher paid than their counterparts in the facilities they are contracted out to. In addition, they get to change their place of work frequently, often with all travel expenses paid. Facilities are going to need to take a look at this practice and determine if they are willing to offer the kind of wages and benefits that these nurses are receiving if they ever hope to have a stable work force.
As far as the nursing profession goes, the long term future is bright. The current shortage allows a graduating nurse to virtually write his or her own ticket. In addition, the shortage is expected to grow worse, which has pushed the concerns of nurses into the public spotlight. In order to alleviate the shortage, governments and facilities will have no choice but to meet the concerns of nurses in order to keep them at their jobs.
Alternatively, the future of the nursing profession may lie within nursing agencies. Unless facilities and governments realize that the concerns of nurses need to be met at the ground level, new and established nurses alike will continue to gravitate towards the pay and flexibility that these agencies offer.
I hope you’ve found this discussion useful, and it’s obvious that a career in nursing working nursing jobs is something that needs to be thought about pretty seriously. Good luck!
Topics: Writing a Resume |
Comments are closed.