FUNDAMENTALS OF NURSING
SHIRLEY WANAMBISI
SHS/BSN/6440-3/2022
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES AND TRENDS THAT AFFECTS THE
PRACTICE OF NURSING TODAY
These are the modern day or rather the current factors that tend to influence the whole practice of
nursing globally. These factors carry a great and influential mark toward the development of the
practice of nursing. Despite the fact that some of these issues we still find the nursing counsels
doing the very best to ensure the quality and the sustainability of the great service to humanity.
Among the leading modern factors that influence nursing is staffing shortage. This is the deficit
nurses in the hospital facilities and other health related setups. For example on a nursing shift we
can find in many health facilities that the workload of an individual nurse is very high because
the patients to nurse ratio is likely to be high. Thus the burnout that the nurses face makes others
not to pursue their nursing carrier and opt to do another health related field. This makes the low
nurse population versus the high population always at demand of health care. The human
resourcing in this field also gets a challenge since every institution of health values trust, some
institutions find it hard to recruit that fresh entries to their firm due to the fear of quality drop and
this may lead to burnout of the current nurses at that facility.
Secondly, is the always high demands brought about by the medical revolution. This is the
development of the patient-centered care. Despite the fact that this creates great opportunity for
the attainment of health, to nurses the work load implied by this is not that light. This is because
the nurses have to work inter-professionally so as to deliver the holistic care that the medicine
board is implementing. The practicing nurses being directed to practice the holistic care, they
serve the whole individual including the psychological and social well-being as opposed to the
specific ailments that the patient is providing. This is very tasking as it entails reporting even the
behavioral changes that this individual meaning that the monitoring matched so as to get these
results to extra burnout to the nurses.
Technology and the medical shift to technology threatens the stay of nurses in their profession.
The introduction of the medical shift to technology threatens the relevancy of nurses in some
medical institutions. For example, the introduction of the Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
which provides all the health records of an individual that is keyed in that systems give the other
professionals like the nutritionists a clear way to practice their medicine without even the aid of
nurses and this threatens the relevancy of these nurses in such institutions. Despite the fact that it
carries a greater contribution to the revolutionary growth of health, it carries a negative impact to
the stay of these nurses because when the technology changes everything changes including the
job description and work allocation of these nurses.
Additionally, patient’s death also brings mental discomfort to these nurses. The death of a patient
brings about episodes of stress and more or less disappointment self-prejudice that often results
to other mental disorders. Apart from that nurses play a role same as a soldier in battle where
they are in the fore-front in combating the various sort of diseases of high morbidity and
mortality and as a result they may contract the disease and more often than not we lose our
nurses. Also the experience with accident or the disaster patients sometimes carries a huge
emotional and mental stress to the nurses since, as they try to help them they also position
themselves in the shoes of these patients and become more traumatizing for them. In additional
to emotional trauma this makes it a huge trend in the nursing field.
Apart from that also the nursing sector is filled with more complex areas that require rationalism
and critical decision making in the aim of problem solving. In some cases we have seen the
nurses taking the sacrifices of cost, reputation and even carrier just for the sake of a problem
solving and in the long run they end up being disappointed and disregarded by the government
and also the nursing counsel: for example on 22nd March 2022 a nurse by the name of RaDonda
Vaught faces imprisonment as she made an error that cost a life in a great hospital in Tennessee.
(sourced from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/22/1087903348/as-a-nurse-facesprison-for-a-deadly-error-her-colleagues-worry-could-i-be-next) This is an incident that vividly points out
the critical thinking that nurses have to adhere to in their line of duty and also be accountable for any
mistake or error that can be experienced.
Apart from that also, due to the insufficient revenue allocation to the ministry of health, underpayment
is not a new thing to nurses mostly in the developing countries for example Kenya. The health sector in a
country as per the Abuja declaration must be taking at least fifteen percentage of the national revenue.
So the rates of underpayment in this field makes human resourcing a huge deal. Underpayment affects
the service of these nurses, first we will have a unmotivated team whose effectiveness and efficiency is
questionable and who at any point of the work load may feel abused in terms of his rights and privilege
as an essential worker may hence resign, strike or choose cause a mayhem.
Despite the fact that the ministries of health and the nursing counsels of every country has done a lot to
improve on the efficiency and reliance of the nurses in our country and globally, there still calls a
concern to be responded to in terms of the current trends and the issues that impede the development
of the nursing field from the educational level in an aim to achieve the Sustainable Development goal 3
of good health and well-being.
REFERENCES
www.google.com/search?q=abuja+declaration&oq=Abuja+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.4329j0j8
&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.ncbih.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/