Shortage of Well Trained Nursing Faculty

Nursing is a noble profession in which nurses have to provide medical health and care to the patients selflessly. It is considered to be the most complex and dynamic profession as in this profession a single mistake can even lead to be the cause of a patient's death. This profession requires hard work, vast professional knowledge and great communication skills. Nurses must be passionate about their work. Nurses should be physically and mentally capable as they have to face unique and complex challenges on a daily basis. Since this is such a high-pressure job, it requires many sacrifices and dedication to guarantee excellent healthcare to patients. It is also considered to be the one of the largest professions of this world, but unfortunately this profession is now facing many problems which are causing many issues for the nurses and making their job difficult. The most common issues through which this profession is suffering are the shortage of well-trained nursing faculty, shortage of nursing staff members, patients high expectations from nurses, very long hours of working for nurses, violence at the workplace, many workplace hazards, and many personal health issues. Some more issues which this profession is facing are safety, multitasking, lack of respect, and low remuneration. In this report we will deeply discuss all these issues. This report will discuss the causes of shortage of well-trained faculty in the nursing profession. Moreover it will also explain about the impact of this issue on our society and what can be done to overcome this issue.

The most common issue in the nursing profession is the shortage of well-trained and well-educated nursing faculty. This is not a new issue as nursing has always lacked the doctorally trained faculty for centuries. This issue is normally due to limited resources as our society does not have quality education institutes to prepare well-trained nursing faculty. These institutes lack qualified professors, lack equipment, lack basic faculties and most importantly they are not funded by the government to hire to new faculties. It has been observed that usually nursing faculty retires earlier than other professional faculties, at an average age of 64.4 which creates a shortage of well-trained teachers to teach nursing students. It has been observed that many nursing teachers after retirement have not been replaced by new teachers who are creating a shortage of many nursing faculty in our society. Fluctuating enrollment is also another problem for nursing students in the past few decades as nursing is considered to have less scope regarding career growth, so most students do not want to graduate as a nursing professional as it is not considered the highly paid profession in our society (Kingma,2018). Teaching as a nursing faculty is also not a highly paid profession, which is creating a discouraging situation for new students as there are many other highly paid professions which are much less complex and have faster career growth even regarding teaching.

This decreasing number of doctorally-trained faculty reduce the number of well trained and well education nursing students. It has been observed in recent years that enrollment in the nursing school has been decreased which is only due to the shortage of well-trained faculty in these nursing schools. So it is clear that shortages of well-trained nursing faculty has a direct relationship with the shortages of well-trained nurses. There are many factors which are influencing this shortage of nurses. The most common factor is the increase in demand for the nurses in hospitals and clinical workplaces. As most of the nurses provide home services to the patients so the requirement for the nurses in hospitals and clinics have been increased which is causing problems for patients and other medical staff. Thus the opportunities for this career have been increased affectedly due to which shortage of quality and well-trained nurses have been increased drastically in our society. Due to these difficulties, nursing is now becoming an even more difficult job for women itself.

The shortage of nursing staff in the hospitals and a large number of patients create a heavy workload on the nurses. They have to work for twelve hours a day and even work double shifts to fulfill the requirements of the patients. Less interest in this profession causes less respect for the nurses. They have to kill their self-respect to do their job which is causing a very difficult situation for the nurses to compete in this profession. As health-care of patients is directly linked with nurses, so all these issue and problems cannot only lead nurses but also patients towards significant risk. There is a lack because there are many other professions in our society which are less complex and highly paid than nursing (Naber, 2014). As working hours have been increased for nurses, this is creating a hectic situation for them and leading them to lack of concentration in their work and increases the chances of medication errors. These problems cause job dissatisfactions among the nurses and nurses are moving towards another profession which is causing the shortage of nurses in the society. Moreover an extreme workload for nurses is creating a severe health hazards for them. As nursing is a valuable and profitable asset for medical industry, nurses with lack of knowledge and professionalism force the patient to move towards another health care center which is also not suitable as a business point of view.

As the shortage of nurses has a direct link with lack of well-trained nursing faculty so there are many possible solutions through which we can overcome these shortages. High-wages, pension plans, and other benefits must be given to nursing-faculty so that maximum number of talented and well -skilled teachers will join nursing institute. This can help to provide quality educations to nursing students. Educational loans, installment fee plans, and different scholarships should be given to nursing students so that maximum number of students can be enrolled in nursing institutions (Byrne, 2014). Nurses compensation level should be improved including high-wages and different professional benefits like pensions and bonuses which must be compatible with other professions in the society. The working environment for the nurses should be getting better. They must be provided with better equipment so that they can do their work more efficiently. As nursing is a very stressful and complicated job, there must be an extracurricular activity during their duty to remove their stress so that quality treatment can be delivered to patients. A short-term solution for this issue can be to hire nurses from other countries to fulfill the medical need. Working hours for the nurses must be reduced so that they can work without any hectic environment and complete their workload more efficiently.

It is concluded that the shortage of the well-trained nursing faculty is the most significant issue in the nursing profession and it is directly related with almost all the other problem in this profession. Controlling the shortage of well-trained nursing faculty will help us to manage the shortage of nurses and other challenges which this profession is facing. As nursing is most noble and widely distributed, so there is an urgent need to overcome these issues as it is having a significant impact on our society. New creative policies should be developed and tested on public level by the government to control this shortage. Moreover, as an individual everyone should respect this noble profession so to encourage and attract more people towards this profession.

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