A nurse staffing crisis seems imminent for Australia, as reported that NSW may not be able to meet patient demands in the future.
One Monash survey found that 32 per cent of nurses have considered leaving the profession and 25 per cent reported they were either likely or very likely to leave the profession.
These numbers are alarmingly high when compared to an industry average range of between three to six per cent.
But in statistics revealed overnight by the NHS Digital, it appears that England are also going through their own nursing crisis.
New figures show that one in ten nurses are leaving the National Health Service (NHS) every year. In totals, that’s about 33,000 British nurses – 10 percent of the workforce.
The most alarming thing, is that there are now more nurses leaving the field than new nurses joining.
There are approximately 3,000 more exiting nurses than joiners, and if that rate continues then nursing numbers will continue to drop.
British nurse advocates have described this as a “dangerous and downward spiral” to the BBC.
Nursing has often been perceived “a job for life”, where people could remain in their careers for decades.
But it’s been revealed that the shortage is not due to nurses simply retiring, instead, more than half of those who walked away were under the age of 40.
Though each country’s health system is unique to their nation, and independent of other countries, it appears that the nursing crisis is a common theme in many counties.
“We are haemorrhaging nurses at precisely the time when demand has never been higher,” Royal College of Nursing head Janet Davie told BBC.
“The next generation of British nurses aren’t coming through just as the most experienced nurses are becoming demoralised and leaving.”
In the US, Reuters found in their investigation that more than 20 hospitals, including some of the country’s largest chains, were facing “tough choices when it comes to filling nursing jobs”.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be more than a million registered nurse openings in the US by 2024 – twice the rate seen in previous shortages.
“Our biggest challenge is getting the pipeline of experienced nurses,” said Peter Callan, director of talent acquisition and development at the University of Missouri Health Care in Columbia, “there are fewer and fewer as people retire”.
In Canada, it’s been projected that the health sector is going to lose half of its nursing workforce to retirement in one to two years.
In fact, each Canadian province will need to open 2,000 to 4,000 nursing jobs in the next couple of years to address their shortage.
“The Canadian government has called the nursing shortage a crisis,” said Tony Burke, vice president of the OMNI College of Nursing,
There are common themes in each country – low incomes, fewer graduates, understaffing and overloading of work.
Maybe when these issues are dealt with head-on, the worldwide nursing crisis will dissipate.
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I am a mature age new graduate Registered Nurse as a second career, thus lacking years of experience I have been unable to secure employment and i am now seeking employment outside of nursing and maybe even health care in general.
The rumors about any shortage of nurses is an old line that is repeatedly spun out for the last few decades. Generally nursing is a career that people, especially young people should seriously avoid. My daughter became an endorsed enrolled nurse in Queensland and had heaps of work including positive supervisors and offers toward career advancement etc.
Then the Queensland Government changed their policies overnight and that effectively locked my daughter out of employment. She is now back at University pursuing a career outside of health care, she was about 9 months from finishing her Registered Nursing ; but no more.
I myself have worked a few times for Queensland health and so far of those commitments made toward me by supervisors have always been neglected or abandoned for various reasons . . . Now i am looking for employment in Nursing elsewhere and looking for employment outside of health care all together.
Their is no commitment to make nursing a safe nor satisfying career. Today; nursing is about money and the vehicle used to make that money is health care. The easiest way to make money in health care is to ” cut – corners ” on things and that is the modern role of nurses…