Nursing is critically III: why?
Throughout the world, hospitals are reporting an acute shortage of registered nurses, especially in the areas of the emergency room, intensive care (cardiac, medical, surgical), and the operating rooms. Many of these shortages have come about because of low nursing school enrollment, and nurses leaving the profession for personal reasons. Other factors impacting the shortage of nurses in general hospitals include the uprising of many home health care agencies, new and convenient community settings, evolving settings such as hospice care, homeless shelters (men, women and children), and prison health care services. Most of these new services the salaries and benefits outweigh what the general hospitals can parallel. The declining interest in the general hospital is a multifaceted issue. Researcher Inglehart suggested in the early 1990s “that nurses’ salaries and benefits do not reflect their educational level, experience or performance.” Weekend or shift work, whether it is 8 or 12 hour
