Want your input ! please join discussion

[Studentwithissues]

Hello All, I am a nursing student currently taking an issues in nursing class, I need help with and assignment. There is alot of info about the current global nursing shortage and I am interested how this has affected you in your practise and if there have been initiative in your institutions that addresses job satisfactinon and the workplace environment. To do something different for this assingment I wanted to create a disscussion about nursing recruitment and retenion in nursing. I know this has been discussed before thru various forums before but I am interested in real stores how this has impacted you. I invite everyone to participate to get this discussion off the ground. Thanks for your participation.

[cougarnurse]

This should interest you: Nursing now an ailing profession

Glut of nurses there......

[Studentwithissues]

Thank you for the redirect to this intersting artical. This adds insight as to why a contingincy of government and health authority officials made a trip to the Philippines to recruit nearly 300 nurses to fill vacant positions. For me this raises a few ethical issuse pertaining to "poching" other countires to ease the shortfall of nurses we have here in Canada, regardless the "glut" of nurses in other countries. The article makes a good point. Are nurses entering the profession for the right reasons?, I can understand these nurses wanting to escape to a better life, but is it a better life for them? this is something they will have to decide for themselves. The big question is this the best thing for the nursing profession? who knows, but it seem to be a quick fix for the time being.

Thanks for taking time to reply. It is interesting to see someone elses paradigm.

[orionseal]

This should be of interest to you. My wife and I (I'm a nurse she's a student nurse)live in a small town we have a community colege here that turns out around 60+ nurses a year. This is compounded by the fact that another fairly close colege dose the same thing, so WE in this area have an excess of NEW nurses. This is an interesting situation because some employers in our area chew up and spitt out these new nurses like yesterdays bubblegum. Thus some of the older more experienced nurses are leaving the area to get JOB SECURITY some are quietly told (in so many words) that they are replaceable.
This is a bad thing for our local area, we are loosing some of our most experienced nurses; not because of job performance, but some of us fear it is due to $$$$$$$$$ hopefuly we are just being silly but we fear this is not the case.

Is the nursing shortage real? I believe it is, but not in small towns like mine.

Hope this helps you out.

[lukemacwan]

Nice to see you in this discussion forum.It will help you more for the nursing help.

[bleucloud]

I work in a teaching hospital in Canada. I am currently a staff RN on a general surgery unit. Due to the nursing shortage, they have had to shut 4 ICU beds which has canceled and postponed alot of surgeries. To try to compensate they are sending patients to the floor as soon as they are off the ventilators.
When they come to my floor we are soo short the nurse patient ratio is 1:8-12 on days and on a night shift it is 1:15! These are acute and unpredictable patients, which should still be in an ICU with 1:1 care and now they are with us. We have 12 empty RN positions that are not filled. And without them our ratios are extremely high, they should be no more then 1:5!
The environment is extremely stressful, and the hospital says "we cut 4 beds in the icu and 4 beds on your unit and that should have remedied the problem.". They are not looking at acuity or nurse patient ratios. And on top of this they can not figure out why no nurses want to come to that floor and work! GEE I WONDER!