The Changing Demographics of Nursing

The face of nursing has been changing in all over the last 50 years. Women who a half a century ago would only release as nurses until they married atomic chassis 18 now expiration up as nursing managers and administrators, moving out of the practical field. . solely still it has been observe that the age of the nursing workforce has increased over the last quarter of a century, and fewer younger people atomic number 18 entering the nursing profession.In fact, at the time of the survey by the Bureau of Health Professions in 1997, baby boomers (those born betwixt 1947 and 1962) were the largest ingredient of the nursing workforce and at the current time only nine-spot percent of registered nurses ar younger than 30 years of age (Santucci, 2004). If this hack continues, then it would mean that the need for nursing would increase by as much as 22% between the years of 1998 and 2008. The demographics of nursing are changing as to the working environment as well up.While hospitals wage about 60% of all nurses, the nurses who work in hospitals are presumable to be younger, mostly due to the strain of physically demanding work and the eluding work involved. While the hospitals tend to produce recruiting schedules more focused on younger nurses, this similarly nub that on that point is the need to promote relationships between the different generations of nurses. Problems in workplaces are the most often sited unlooses when it comes to job perturbation rates among nurses.And the flow of younger nurses toward the hospital setting also means that the number of freshly graduate nurses creation hired into the nursing mob is getting higher. This in turn results in a greater number of rather in pay offd new nurses in positions that may be dampen filled by experienced nurses. In order to answer this problem, compliance programs ache been developed for new graduate nurses, to provide orientation to the differentiation areas such as critical ca re, medical/surgical and psychiatry. These residency programs take care to do much to help the new nurses address the challenges they face in their new positions.Green and Puetzer (2002) clearly define in their article the issues touch the importance of effective recruitment, efficient training and ultimate store of experience nursing staff. A structured mentoring and precepting program appears to be key to all three of these issues and shows that while the schools prepare the nurses for the basics, mentoring programs are the most effective in the workplace. Without residency programs, there is a significant degree of turnover in the nursing staff, which leads to poor clinical are and burnout.A learning by Bowles and Candela in 2005 reviewed involved the experiences of recent RN graduates in their offshoot jobs (Bowles and Candela, 2005). The study was meant to determine new graduate wisdoms of first jobs and why they unexpended them, if they had. The results showed that 30% of new graduates left(a) their positions indoors atomic number 53 year, and 57% had left their first positions within 2 years. Issues cited for leaving consisted of patient care problems, unsafe nurse to patient ratios, and line associated with the acuity of the patients.Other significant issues (22%) noted a lack of support on the part of management, as well as a lack of guidance and a sensation of being given too much responsibility for patient care as compared to the nurses level of comfort and experience. This review showed that RNs in the first year of work tend to leave their first position at a much higher rate than RNs who are in second or resultant positions. It would appear from this study that to improve RN retention one essential consider the development of orientation and mentoring programs.This would improve work environments and reduce stress levels. There is a limited availability of preceptors. This often causes nurse interns multiplex preceptor assignments t hat causes problem with educational continuity, follow through on assignments and attainment assessments, as well as preceptor burnout. Smith and Chalker (2005) describe the issue from the nurse interns view where all active duty military nurses assign to a military hospital between December 2000 and November 2003 were surveyed.A do sample of 216 nurse interns were surveyed regarding the nurse interns perception of the preceptor continuity within the existing four-month nurse intern program. These nurses were also asked about differences in perception between clinical performance, division transition, job satisfaction and nursing retention issues among nurse interns who had the same preceptor throughout their 4-month internships as compared to those who did not.In this study, there appeared to be no difference reported in the clinical performance, role transitions and retention in nursing between nurse interns who had assigned clinical preceptors versus those who did not. Over 4 8% of those surveyed indicated that the presence of one or multiple preceptors had forgetful to do with the nurses desire to stay within the nursing profession. It is important, however, to note that of those who were surveyed who were new graduates, of these respondents 85% felt that having the same preceptor was most beneficial.Some livelihood comments included issues such as building a trusting adhesiveness with the preceptor, consistency and continuity, and confidence building. Another interesting study assessed the effectiveness of exploitation a mentorship program not only to retain quality nurses, save also to actually recruit them to programs in the first place. In this study (Nelson and Godfrey, 2004) identified that the new graduate nurse population required limited attention, quoting that one in every three nurses under the age of 30 planned to leave their current job within the year (Aiken, et. l. 2001). agreement this effect of patient care continuity, Nelson and Godfrey set out to see if a nurse mentorship program designed to provide an intense experience for students to establish greater clinical skills, and work values that would lead to commitment to original teams and hopefully job retention. This study included nursing students who were within 2 semesters of graduation from a local program in Florida.All candidates for the program were prescreened and required a completed application as well as two letter of reference before they would be accepted into the program. Students in this study worked with assigned preceptors for a minimum of 16 hours with each(prenominal) two-week period, mentoring one on one with an experienced RN. It is interesting to note that ten of the students are now graduated, and remain employed by the hospital at which they precepted.It is apparent that the selection process weeded out those applicants who most likely would be in benefit of a preceptor program, perhaps the more clinically insecure RN or the one who is struggling with assimilating clinical stopping point making skills and the like. There was benefit to the students in that they all felt amend prepared for entry into employment as an RN. The benefit to the hospital also cannot be denied. As noted in the study, nest egg related to RN retention continues to accrue.Using the assumption that the 62 graduate nurses who did not go in in the program had participated, and applying the hospitals 23% turnover rate applied to this so-called group, this would mean a net savings of 14 nurses (instead of the 29 they would have lost without the program, according to previous rates of turnover). Assuming that the cost of mentorship for each RN would be approximately $10,000, and then the savings would be roughly $150,000 to the hospital based on nurse retention alone.This study would be to indicate that the nurse mentorship program not only improves nurse clinical skills and job satisfaction, but also can be of monetary savings to t he hospitals themselves. While relatively few articles available on mentorship for graduate nurses exist, there are enough valid studies out there which all calculate to indicate the importance of orientation programs not only to improve clinical care, but to decrease nursing staff turnover, preceptor burnout and decrease the fiscal burden such turnover costs to the healthcare system.