Nursing Shortage in Canada

To counterattack the issue of shortage, there is need to create and implement programs which could be used to help prevent the problem of occurrence of shortage. Programs that could be used to identify and understand factors that could lead to a shortage of nursing yet there are nurses in the country, but the country is on the verge of experiencing shortage and enhance methods for the propagation of best practices for recruiting and retaining nurses. Nursing Shortage in Canada Canada is headed to a state of experiencing a shortage in nursing an issue that is associated with recruitment and retention issues, an issue that if not looked into could lead to certainty and cause a critical impact on the health services.

The different outcome is linked to the inability to recruit and retain health practitioners. Closure of, or reduced access to health facilities as well as poor quality of care and productivity, are cases of nursing inadequacies. Given the paradigm shift in profession in which women no longer perceive nursing as a charming career option as used to be the case in the years and have the realization that there are more wide range of careers available to them and thus switching to those careers and as a result creating a gap which there is nobody to fill. As a result of the paradigm shift, there is a strain in the recruitment and retention as there are no readily available nurses to fill in the vacancies left unoccupied given the today modern women who have extensive know-how and the profession deemed feminine.

Too much and less pay: Nurses usually have a lot of workloads to handle which in turn is stressful to them and causes a lot of physical and emotional drainage more especially considering the fact they earn less compared to their output. The issue, therefore, lies not only in recruitment, but equally in the retention of qualified health practitioners (Sigma Theta Tau International, 2013). If nurses are not valued and if their roles are not revised then the problem of shortage of nursing in the country will be a thing of fruition this is because nurses want to be held with high esteem and respected (Johnson, 2012). Hospitals should increase the salaries of the nurses and also offer incentives for work well done to boost the morale of the nurses and additional activities as an attracting and pulling factor for people to join the profession.

Policymakers should raise the age of retiring so that the nurses who have attained the retiring age are retained to elongate the learning period of the new entrants so that they are left hanging knowing nothing in the practice due to lack of guidance and direction. Additionally, the policymakers can encourage "returners" back to practice. This move can help counter the shortage which is deemed as cost-effective and time concise regarding training and introducing a nurse in the workforce. It is helpful regarding combating the shortage situation while other new entrants are still in training (Buchan, Duffield, & Jordan, 2015). , Duffield, C. , & Jordan, A. (2015, July 3). ‘Solving’ nursing shortages: do we need a New Agenda? Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary. wiley. com/blog. entry. html/2017/01/07/dire_nursing_shortag-NoCQ.