Introduction
The current physician shortage is a blooming healthcare crisis that directly impacts the possibility of growing poor health outcomes for patients. This issue contributes to the delay in when registered nurses provide individuals with healthcare. Unfortunately, even a minimum delay can have an adverse influence on a person’s health. Overall, many conflicting needs are the reason for the aforementioned problem, and yet it is the healthcare sector’s mission to provide a solution despite the difficulties and complications.
Main body
To begin with, the causes for the physician shortage are complex and together have formed a pressing issue for the healthcare sector. Naturally, the time and cost of medical training play a pivotal role in understaffed health institutions (Howley, 2022). That is why the somewhat unfair monetary compensation for the amount of effort and time the medical students put into their education prevents aspiring registered nurses from entering the field (Howley, 2022; Zhang et al., 2020). Nevertheless, even this potential decline in the number of students does not help all medical universities to accommodate the number of individuals willing to enter undergraduate programs (Zhang et al., 2020). In other words, training to be a registered nurse is exceptionally time-consuming because of the practice required for the students to pass to be qualified to work in the hospitals. Similarly, not everyone can afford to finish the training to be a registered nurse considering the high prices of the studies.
Furthermore, as the nation is getting older, a more complex type of treatment is required for registered nurses to design. As a result, more analyses are needed, and the whole process becomes more time-consuming, making the workforce scarce to the demand in the healthcare sector. The post-COVID-19 nation’s health indicates the insufficiency of resources to accommodate all the patients who require medical assistance (Howley, 2022). To elaborate, the apparent adverse influence of COVID-19 on the bodies of the infected leads to a higher chance of more people contracting severe diseases, meaning a higher demand for healthcare (Howley, 2022). All in all, the primary causes for the physician shortage are high demand, complex training to become registered nurses, time-consuming processes, and the lack of resources.
The development of policies to address this severe issue is possible but is likely to be complicated due to the aforementioned factors. It is critical to first tackle the issue of resource insufficiency in the form of building more healthcare institutions to accommodate and treat more patients simultaneously (Zhang et al., 2020). Consequently, this modification is likely to be temporary because the demand for healthcare will not remain the same in the future (Howley, 2022). Yet it is enough to increase the capacity of more effectively and productively meeting the need for medical assistance in the healthcare sector.
Another critical point is that it is also essential to provide the existing comfort with adequate working settings. If registered nurses are forced to work day and night, they are likely to make more life-changing errors and be dissatisfied with their jobs (Kelly & Porr, 2018; Milliken, 2018). Similarly, the high expectations for them may appear stressful, making them shift their focus from the treatment quality to the time spent on curing the patient (Kelly & Porr, 2018). Such an abandonment of ethical principles can have adverse effects on the registered nurses’ efficiency and the quality of work, further negatively impacting the health of patients.
Having considered these immediate impacts on the physician shortage, it is crucial to consider the influence of the patients on policy development to tackle this issue. Naturally, it is impossible to control the factor of patients as individuals are separate from the existence of the healthcare sector and its operation (Zhang et al., 2020). For instance, the nation’s health will probably remain poor due to the severe consequences of COVID-19 on society’s health (Howley, 2022). Likewise, it is impossible to change the fact that the community consists of many elderly people who require more complex treatment and more time and medicine to be cured (Howley, 2022). Patients are bound to impact the healthcare sector in one way or another, but, likely, the scarce workforce is not going to meet the demands for medical assistance any time soon.
Conclusion
To sum up, the competing needs of patients and registered nurses are conflicting, leading to complications in the development of policies to solve this problem. Nevertheless, the proposed solutions to some of the issues are likely to positively impact the healthcare sector, making it more efficiently meet the demands for medical assistance. It is possible to minimize the adverse effects of resource insufficiency and understaffed hospitals to ensure that more people can be treated with the same quality and according to ethical medical standards. Still, it is unlikely that the problem will be tackled fully anytime soon due to the necessity of making more long-term and drastic changes to healthcare.
References
Howley, E. K. (2022). The U.S. Physician Shortage Is Only Going to Get Worse. Here Are Potential Solutions. Time. Web.
Kelly, P., & Porr, C. (2018). Ethical Nursing Care Versus Cost Containment: Considerations to Enhance RN Practice. OJIN, 23(1). Web.
Milliken, A. (2018). Ethical Awareness: What It Is and Why It Matters. OJIN, 23(1). Web.
Zhang, X., Lin, D., Pforsich, H., & Lin, V. W. (2020). Physician workforce in the United States of America: forecasting nationwide shortages. Human Resources for Health, 18(1). Web.