Developments in the Global Nursing Shortage


The state of medical technology and healthcare reach has grown tremendously for the past few years. Now, people have now access of the latest medical help that they can get and many have taken healthcare insurance as a safety net from sudden illness and accident. Hospitals and medical facilities have grown like mushrooms all over the world to meet the growing demand for better medical care.

As a result, the healthcare industry has raised the demand for talented and specialist nurses to meet the needs of patients. Qualified personnel are needed in these facilities to maintain a higher level of care. However, as the the demand grows, the supply of labor can’t meet up that is why most countries suffer from nursing shortage. Developed countries have high demand for nurses while most developing countries lose much of its talented workforce to brain drain.

Many medical facilities are understaffed and once understaffed, the quality of patient care and other nursing services also decline. How can patients understand the nurse saying that everything is going to be all right if nursing services fell beyond their expectations?

There are many factors that can be attributed to the global nursing shortage. One of the factors can be the less number of people taking up the profession. Some countries do not have a solid nursing education infrastructure to begin with and so there are few nurses around.

Nursing is a demanding profession and so some youngsters may regard it as a mundane profession where it carries no respect. On the flipside of things, other people regard nursing as a ticket abroad and so many have been looking for overseas jobs to continue their career in nursing abroad.

The fact that most developed countries pay much better than developing countries, it is not a surprise that many Filipino nurses think that nursing abroad is much better at home. Some don’t seem to understand that working overseas jobs can be exhausting as nurses work in extended hours in understaffed medical facilities. At the end of the day, nursing abroad is fast track for immigration to countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

Recruitment of nurses has become a growing industry. Since the gap between the number of nurses needed at hospitals and the total number of healthcare personnel is considerably large, it is a wise business decision to recruit nurses from other countries.

This strategy can cover labor shortages within the country. Developing countries do have plenty of nurses who would be willing to relocate to the U.S. The American healthcare sector only has to look for talented nurses with a good grasp of English. Foreign nurses have to integrate into American culture so that they can easily blend to the society and be effective nurses that they are expected to be.

Outdated and temporary solutions are no longer working. It is imperative for hospitals, and other medical facilities to come up with effective answers otherwise they would never be able to reverse this trend.

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