The shortage of nursing faculty is experienced in many countries and is expected to increase in the next few years due to early retirement and aging of professionals in the discipline. The information needed to control nursing practice can only be made reliable through constant research. Nurse leaders are represented in other states, national health policy organizations that are important in solving policy issues and statements. Health crisis is a major concern to the whole nation and, therefore, requires a collective effort among nursing professionals, education practices, health care executives, government and the media to work as a team to help solve this nursing inefficiency.
Factors affecting nursing faculty include
Job dissatisfaction which entails increasing teaching workloads, increasing demands for salary increment and long working hours. Fewer nurses available on shift has undermined their duty as little time is provided for research making them produce low returns in terms of patient delivery reports and treatment creating low motivation of the workers in the field.
Another issue is insufficient outreach to pre-college students, which enhances awareness about career levels in nursing education by the general public and among nurses. The objective is to motivate and prepare the students to choose a career path that suits their understanding. It is important as being a nursing facilitator needs an advanced education in nursing and teaching through a common pool of individual intervention upon discussion.
It is also important to consider aging of nursing faculty as another contributing issue. There are no qualified nurses to replace then older generation upon retrenchment or resignation. Lack young of individuals to replace the older generation. Most of them entered the profession at an older age and offered few years of work getting a recent retrenchment before achieving their career goals in the field of study. (National Advisory Council on Nurse Education and Practice, 2009).
Strategies adopted by nursing schools to counter the shortage:
Nursing schools are forming more partnerships with clear goals, procedures and expectations and seeking support from other private organizations to help expand student capacity in academics and knowledge on how to handle practical experiments during their studies such as the expansion of clinical placement sites. Two or more schools can develop one universal faculty to help students improve their diversity of understanding within the nursing career.
The concerned parties could choose to focus on retaining most productive seniors in the department and creating more new faculties in a timely manner relation to retrenchment anticipations, establishing a new educational and research training tradition for motivating nurses and providing them with the needed support as they pursue their doctoral study.
Collaborative management is another technique that could be adopted to reduce the shortage. This approach could be implemented by creating a conducive environment for work, encouraging teamwork to achieve the faculty goal at the workplace. For every good task performed, the employees need to be recognized and awarded, while revising how nurses are valued and their specific responsibilities assigned. Health leaders at the local level can make a compensation list of raising complaints and address them on time such as increasing financial aid for academic needs in both local and national schools.
Nurse executives should start a group to educate their staff about how to communicate to the younger generation of the importance of nursing and the community as a whole. This will be done to inspire more people to take up the study to join the profession. Initiatives such as awarding students scholarship, raising funds to support nursing education and national advertising are used to target interested students.
Hospitals and other medical executives can start by respecting nurses Union’s Organization. This committee ensures that good relations and proper collective bargaining are maintained for workers’ salaries increment, good environmental working conditions, equal and fair treatment from the executives irrespective of gender, race, and age. Administrators and educators must be responsible to individuals and consider what is important to its staffs by creating supportive policies and flexibility benefits such as job promotions and equal shifts.
In conclusion, states, and national investments are needed to help colleges and universities dealing with nursing faculties to increase the capacity of these programs. By adopting this, it will attract qualified students and help nurses in the field. Campuses must ensure they explore new ideas for efficient use available resources, giving enough support and counseling for students and other health leaders. This will, in turn, improve their knowledge in research and exploration of new inventories through educational programs and workshops.
References
National Advisory Council on Nurse Education Practice (NACNEP). (2009). The Impact of the Nursing Faculty Shortage.
