The nursing profession as we know it, is dying fast – and current academic conditions appear unprepared for the transformations needed to return the passion people once felt for this field. Can it be turned around?
Some medical experts think it can and so do I. Choices we make could prevent 300,000 pre-mature deaths yearly … as well as lift the pressure off an overburdened healthcare system … according to Faye Slattery a registered
nurse who wrote Where Have All the Nurses Gone? Details may surprise you.Nurses warn others to avoid the field! A 2002 survey of nurses conducted by the American Nursing Association revealed that more than half did not recommend nursing as a career to their friends… What’s happened to the passion that used to accompany this pivotal profession?
Nurses dislike work in growing numbers! According to another study published in Health Affairs in October 2002, more than 40 percent of hospital nurses reported being dissatisfied with their jobs.
Nurses are disappearing from the healthcare scene in droves! A study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association predicts that by the year 2020, 400,000 more nurses will be needed than are now available.
Some leaders believe that a progressive university campus could create cutting edge nursing distinctives that would turn around the growing nurse care crisis. What do you think?
Others fear that significant renewal would be a near impossible task because of:
- challenges from ever growing nurse specialties
- longer hours and more stress
- more patients for already overburdened nurses
- demands from constantly changing technologies
The nursing field is ripe for visionary leadership and brain based practices to transform nursing outcomes to meet the changing horizons and needs of health care communities. This is one case where crisis will hopefully spark medical brains to address key problems with solution that benefit nurses and clients alike.
Can it happen in your health care community?
This is certainly one of the more difficult and important issues we'll need to be solving in the coming years. Should be an exciting challenge as the boomers grow older.
By the way, first line of the second paragraph may have a typo (thing->think). Again, very interesting read.
Posted by: Tim Mooney | January 29, 2008 12:42 PM | Permalink to Comment