Proper Compensation Means Great Things for our Nursing Shortage

by Diane Penna
There was a very enlightening article recently in the Post Gazette about the nursing shortage in the United States. It seems that a bill was passed recently at the White House that toughens up security and immigrant rules for our borders, but made way for foreign nurses to come to our country and work. The reasoning was that an influx of immigrant nurses might decrease the shortage of nurses in our own health care system.

Unfortunately, that was the wrong move. Many countries outside the U.S. provide education to their nurses and invest in their educations so that they can serve their OWN countries. How is that exactly helping the United States? Allowing immigrant nurses into the United States is just a temporarily solution to a much larger problem. Not only that, it is creating problems in other countries that are losing their "investment" when these nurses immigrate to America. It ends up being a lose-lose situation.

The real solution is treating our own nurses fairly and properly compensating them for their efforts. Just like in medicine, you can treat the symptoms and get temporary relief but you have to cure the illness for that relief to be permanent.

Nurses are really the heart of the healthcare system. They are on the front lines of a patient's care and as such, have a large amount of responsibility placed on their shoulders. Because of the never-ending budget cutbacks, nurses often have to make do with less and are also expected to work harder, longer hours to compensate for short-staffing caused by those cutbacks. Well guess what? No one wants to work without proper compensation and that is essentially why many nurses leave the profession. And who could blame them?

While there is a nursing shortage in many healthcare facilities around the United States, there is no shortage of actual nurses. Getting right down to it, if you took all the medically-trained nurses who are in other careers because of the staffing and compensation situations in healthcare, there are actually enough to fill in those gaps. However, the only way to lure them back into the medical profession is to revamp our healthcare system. In other words, the powers that be need to actually do more than pay lip service.

There are countless other ways to save on a hospital budget than shortchange staff. Let's get those nurses back to work by offering them great benefits and an environment where they would be happy. Create better nursing education and recruitment programs. And listen. Listening is a skill that is almost a lost art. Nurses have something to say and they have great ideas. By valuing their input, this nursing shortage could soon be a thing of the past.

Articles
Online Nursing Degree For Busy Nurses
Who Can Apply For Online Nursing Degrees?