The Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Nurses in Aged Care - Term Paper Example

THE RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF QAULIFIED NURSES IN AGED CARE THE ISSUES SURROUNDING RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF QUALIFIED NURSES IN AGED CARE AND RECOMMENDATION OF WAYS TO REDUCE THESE ISSUES BY THE NURSING PROFESSIONAL 23rd May, 2012 Introduction Nurses in hospital environments especially in community aged care service institutions, face a lot of workplace and professional issues when offering services to patients. Much of these issues results in development of workplace pressures, a factor which has caused hospital difficulties in the recruitment and retention of highly qualified professional nurses. The frequent changes in the working environment and quality expectations for nurses under the aged offers both psychological and professional dilemmas. Lack of appropriate knowledge and skills to enable nurses effectively address or solve these common issues in their working environment usually results to abandonment of nursing career (Karmel and Li, 2010). Many nursing institutions therefore have experienced a chronic shortage of highly qualified and quality providers of nursing services, and this raises the number of patients to be attended by a nursing staff. This causes more pressure on the little population of nursing staff and further worsening workplace conditions and subsequent negative attitude towards their retention. Professional nursing requirements are highly demanding but usually the workplace environment does not offer a conducive atmosphere for exhibiting these priorities. They are expected to show individual abilities to maintain a high degree of competency in medical care practice, accept their responsibility and be held accountable for their own practice. Also they are required to show high standards of nursing care services, provide patient advocacy as well as give a non-prejudice care to patients of different socio-cultural lifestyles. Nursing service providers must be able to safeguard patient privacy, respect human dignity, and show accountability and responsibility for their options in patient care. For proper understanding of issues surrounding recruitment and retention in aged care environment, one has to understand the nursing attritions and workplace challenges (Hassmiller and Cozine, 2001). These challenges have led to aged care nurse shortages, and hospital management should formulate different strategies for solving these issues. Aged care nursing professional challenges Recruitment of nurses in aged care has a lot of issues as new graduate nurses choose to start their career in an acute hospital environments where they offer short-term care for fast positive outcomes. This is very different in aged care nursing institutions where there is a low possibility of achieving patient cure and related complex medical problems usually managed by a palliative care (Glashberg et al., 2007). Similarly the nursing professionals faces challenges in the nature of work in the aged care service delivery, and their low status with a rapid changes in institutional structure have resulted in diminished morale. This has eventually led to increased rates of turnover as well as abseintism cases in their duties of care delivery (Stein et al., 2000). The nursing professionals faces issues of institutional hierachy and ernomous responsibilities to ensure patient well-being. The nurses most frequently face difficulties in addressing ethical moral dilemmas in their nursing profession, and this worsens an already developed dissatisfaction with their workplace environment leading to frustration and subsequent abandonment of their careers. Other issues challenging recruitment and retention of aged care nurses involves professional value dissonance, and this can be associated with conscience stress especially when nurses fails to provide quality care inherent in professional practice. Some environmental barriers may result in barriers in optimum nursing service delivery and this is a common occurence when there is lack of support for major clinical care ethical decision making (Yarbrough et al., 2008). This occurs when institutional hierrachy limits nurses from acting in ways directed for patient interest or consistency with individual nurse values. They are therefore frustrated and might decide to abandon their careers as this can result to a more complex professional ethics dilemmas which with little experiences nurses can fail to address or solve altogether. Again the assurance of patient well-being and prevention of negative clinical outcomes in aged populations is an ernomous responsibility which frequently stresses the nursing professionals (Neville et al., 2006). Periods for interactions with patient is usually limited and this brings a feeling of inadequacy in nursing care with an ultimate loss of professional values. Under extreme conditions workplace environment fails to offer workplace moral values, resulting in professional work satisfaction and individuals opts for negative decisions of remaining in the workplace. Ways to solve and eliminate aged care nursing staff challenges The ultimate challenge of professional nursing in aged care community service, is a general shortage of highly qualified staff and quality provision of nursing services. This therefore calls for formulation of mechanisms which can improve the population of nursing professional in these institutions, through successful recruitment and retention of nursing staff. The Australian health care institutions can therefore have more workers hence reducing individual workload, a factor which can prevent unsatisfying work environments. Due to improved working conditions in nursing care, there will be assignment of less patients, creating easy and efficient working conditions (Kuehn, 2007). Failure to this the nurses will be subjected to an overload of patients making working conditions difficult and thus worsening the situation of new recruitment and retention of the already strained hospitals nurses. This can be achieved through proper address and elimination of the nursing profession issues, especially by the Australian nursing care institutions. Nursing professionals should be offered a conducive working environment to enhance provision of quality service delivery and general patient well-being and satisfaction. Most importantly, the aged care services should be focused in patient well-being instead of focusing in profit motives in order to limit the frequently developing professional dilemmas (Kuehn, 2007). The Australian government should advocate for increased nursing training institutions to reduce individual nurse workload. This will give motivation for professional nursing practice especially for the newly graduated population of nurses, who have objectives of career development in hospitals. The non-nursing tasks assigned by their hospital administration should be limited to avoid workplace dissatisfaction and this will offer them a positive attitude towards nursing career development. Also nurses should not be subjected to prolonged working hours, and this will eventually reduce many human errors and nursing care inefficiency, a factor that leads to professional dissonance (Cooper et al., 2004). The ageing proportions of qualified nurses will be improved by increasing training institutions for increasing the staff turnover and this can avoid understaffing dilemmas. However the cost of training a nurse is approximately equivalent to recruitment of a well trained nursing professional and this makes it necessary to retain the nursing worforce instead of training new individuals who may again abandon their profession later. Retention of nurses can be achieved by improving the workplace conditions, and patient care appreciation by both the client and administration (Karmel and Li, 2010). Nurses should be allowed to make their own individual decisions, based on patient welfare and their believes on the best health care service to be rendered to a particular patient. This can enhance professional appreciation and establishment of a positive attitude towards career development, as well as reducing the chronic acute shortages experienced in aged care nurses. The most important issue in Australian nursing professional has been a highly growing ageing population and this has affected the supply of health care services to this population. This can be due to the increased demand for health care services and the health care workforce in the community based nursing institutions with a high number of elderly people who needs this service (Shah and Burke, 2002). There is an increased demand of nursing care services and this has resulted from increasing levels of income and wealth. Recent and new emerging technologies, emerging and changing disease symptoms, changing public health priorities and a focus on palliative care service delivery and prevention of chronic disease. The supply of nursing care services is highly influenced by policy stakeholders; and this is based on both Australian government policies and local policies which facillitate effective recruitment and retention of nursing staff. Temporal staffing and hiring of nurses may give a short term solution for nursing shortages, and this does not guarantee the necessary required service care quality and consistency in relationship with the cost issues (Department of Health, 2002). Temporal staffing usually involved recruitment of not well qualified nursing staff, and this may results to supervision and working problems. The policy makers such as the government and institutions should focus on attracting new students into nursing schools. Improved training facilities in nursing institutions must be ensured by the Australian environment, with objectives of increasing the populations of nursing workforce in aged care facilities which experiences a prolonged acute shortages. The nursing professionals should be provided with quality staff support and guidance for managing ethical dilemmas in workplace which stresses the retention and recruitment of new nurses in aged care (Martin, 2003). The professional stress associated with working in an aged care nursing home requires a lot of skills and nurses should be offered this, to enable them deal with stress of subjected working environment. Occassional learning sessions and light relaxation exercises daily, may enhance promotional of both physical and psychological body fitness. This minimises chances of stress development by nurses in their service delivery and it also may play a very important role in prevention of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes (Bonczek and Woodard, 2006). The stress in working environment can be assessed by frequent and routine check ups and they are provided with psychological support. Most of the nurses have issues with their health care supervisors and they tend to establish negative opinions on matters of nursing services especially in areas of patient satisfaction in aged care. Hospital administration may achieve effecient supervision through providing a cooperative workplace environment with their juniour staff, so as to boost individual morale. Private nursing institutions usually subject the nursing professionals into difficult working conditions and there is lack of a set of employment contracts (Shah and Burke, 2002). The health institutions tend to operate on a frequent verbal contracts which is based on profit making objectives rather than quality nursing care services. The Australian government has an obligation to plan a comprehensive program of nursing staff development and education, and thus health care institutions will offer a quality and long term care environment in nursing services. However this will take in consideration facts of balancing technical, and behavioural elements in their stipulated program (Lynn et al., 2006). The workplace conditions should be improved to enhance satisfaction especially in terms of service delivery and general interractions with other hospital staff. They need to be given appreciation for their high dedicated service especially by patient recognition so as to enable them sustain workplace satisfaction and a positive attitude (Department of Health, 2002). There should be a well establishment of professional units and workplace hierrachies to allow change of image and status of aged care. Its important to recruit adequate staff levels and this will give a clear responsibilities in health care services. The supervisors should limit any increased pressures of nursing professionals with multiple roles and responsibilities of housekeeping, reception, administration due to reduced funding and attempts to improve on hospital profit (MacDonald, 2007). Conclusion The aged care nursing service should be focused on patient well-being and service satisfaction, nursing institutions should avoid aiming at high profit returns in compromise of quality nursing care. The nursing staff should be increased to reduce the individual workload, a factor tht promotes professional dissatisfaction in their delivery. Due to increased ageing population in Australia, there is increased nuirsing service demand and a conducive environment should be provided to facillitate quality service delivery (Karmel and Li, 2010). This can be achieved through effective interactiins between these professionals, frequent education and training of nurses on handling professional dilemmas as well as haing an uquipped understanding of nursing challenges and ways for their management. References Bonczek ME, and Woodard EK (2006), Who'll Replace You When You're Gone? Nurs Manage; 37(8):30-34. 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J Adv Nurs. ;57(2):119-126. Martin P, Yarbrough S, and Alfred D (2003), Professional Values Held by Baccalaureate and Associate Degree Nursing Students. J Nurs Scholarsh ;35(3):291-296 Neville, Christine C. and Yuginovich, Trudy and Fallon, Anthony Bruce and Soar, Jeffrey and Boyes, Joanne and Grasby, David (2006) A stock-take of existing aged care clinical placements for undergraduate nursing students in Australia. Project Report. University of Southern Queensland, Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health, Toowoomba, Australia Shah C, and Burke G (2002), Job Growth and Replacement Needs Nursing Occupations in National Review of Nursing Education: the nursing workforce. Commonwealth of Australia. Susan Yarbrough, Danita Alfred and Martin (2008), Recruitment and Retention Report: Research Study-Professional Values and Retention in Nursing management Susan B. Hassmiller and Maureen Cozine (2001), Australian Aged Care Nursing: A Critical Review of Education, Training, Recruitment and Retention in Residential and Community Settings [DETYA - Commonwealth] Read More